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THE ROMANCE OF 
AMERICAN EXPANSION 



TH E ROMANCE OF 
AMERICAN EXPANSION 



BY 

H. ADDINGTON BRUCE 



ILLUSTRATED 




NEW YORK 

MOFFAT, YARD ^ COMPANY 
1909 



Copyright, 1909, hy 

MOFFAT, YARD & COMPANY 

NEW YORK 



All rights reserved 
Published, March, 1909 



Li5;;ARY of CONGRESS 
Two Cooies Received 

MAK 22 ia09 

Copyriiiiit iintry ^ 
cuss CC XXc, Ho, 



TJu Plimpton Press Norwood Mass. U.S.A. 



MY WIFE 

TO WHOSE STIMULATING COUNSEL AND 

DISCRIMINATING CRITICISM THIS 

VOLUME, LIKE ALL MY 

LITERARY ENDEAVOR, 

OWES MUCH 



CONTENTS 

CHAP. PAGE 

Preface xi 

I Daniel Boone and the Opening Up of the West . i 

II Thomas Jefferson and the Louisiana Purchase , 24 

III Andrew Jackson and the Acquisition of Florida . 51 

IV Sam Houston and the Annexation of Texas ... 78 
V Thomas Hart Benton and the Occupation of Oregon 106 

VI John Charles Fremont and the Conquest of Cali- 
fornia 136 

VII William Henry Seward and the Alaska Cession . 166 

VIII William McKinley and the Transmarine Possessions 187 

IX Hints for Further Reading 211 

Index 239 



vu 



ILLUSTRATIONS 



FACING 
PAGE 

Andrew Jackson Frontispiece >^ 

From a painting by John Vanderlyn in the Council Chamber, 
City Hall, New York. 

Daniel Boone 4 •- 

From the statue by Enid Yandell. 

Daniel Boone at Eighty-five 18 -^ 

From the only contemporary portrait of Boone, a painting made 
by Chester Harding in 18 19. 

Thomas Jefferson 26 »''^ 

From a crayon drawing, now in the possession of Dr. W. C. N. 
Randolph, of Charlottesville, Virginia, the great-grandson of 
Jefferson. 

The Signing of the Louisiana Purchase Treaty .... 48 
From the commemorative statue at the St. Louis Exposition, 

The Hermitage, Jackson's Home in Tennessee .... 60 
From an old lithograph by Pendleton. 

Sam Houston 88 

From a portrait painted by F. B. Carpenter in 1S55, and now 
owned by Mr. Clarence W. Bowen, New York. 

Stephen Austin 98 

From a portrait in the possession of the Texas Historical Society. 

Capitol of the Republic of Texas 104 

Photographed by J. B. Walker, from a crayon sketch owned by 
J. P. Underwood. 

Thomas Hart Benton 118 "" 

From a portrait in the possession of the Missouri Historical 
Society. 

ix 



X ILLUSTRATIONS 

FACING 
PAGE 

John Charles Fremont 144 

Monterey in its Early Days 154 

From an old print. 

William Henry Seward 170 

From a photograph loaned by his son Frederick W. Seward. 

The Signing of the Alaskan Treaty 182 

From a painting by Leutze. 

William McKinley 190 

George Dewey 206 



PREFACE 

The aim of this volume is to give a brief, yet 
sufficiently comprehensive, account of the terri- 
torial growth of the United States, with especial 
reference to the achievements of the men — Daniel 
Boone, Thomas Jefferson, Andrew Jackson, Sam 
Houston, Thomas Hart Benton, John Charles 
Fremont, William Henry Seward, and William 
McKinley — who were pre-eminent among their 
contemporaries in each of the forward steps in the 
movement from sea to sea. By thus emphasizing 
the personal element it is hoped not merely to 
enhance the interest of the narrative, but still 
more to afford a clear view of the true nature of the 
American advance. 

It was no fortuitous development. Its roots 
struck back to the early colonization of America, 
and it was the logical result of the genesis, on a 
largely unoccupied continent, of an exceptionally 
virile, progressive, and ambitious nation. The in- 
stincts and needs of that nation irresistibly impelled 
it to territorial enlargement. It did not always 



xii PREFACE 

expand without conflict with other nations. Yet 
its record, however sharply scrutinized, is singu- 
larly free from blemish. Even the so-called spolia- 
tion of Mexico proves, on close examination, by no 
means so blameworthy as has generally been be- 
lieved. From beginning to end there is Httle to 
regret and much to admire in the story of American 
expansion. 

Those who desire to make a more detailed study 
than is possible here, are advised to consult the 
works enumerated in the critical bibliography con- 
tained in the closing chapter. Without attempting 
to cover the subject fully — a really impossible 
task in view of the immensity of its literature — an 
effort has been made to include some mention of 
all the most helpful and generally accessible pub- 
lications relating to the different acquisitions. Ref- 
erences will also be found to biographies and other 
books dealing with the lives of the men who were 
most conspicuously associated with these acqui- 
sitions as leaders and instmments in executing the 
national will. 

This work, I should add, was originally prepared 
for publication as a serial in The Outlook, and I am 
under a special debt of gratitude to the editors of 
that periodical for permission to reproduce a num- 



PREFACE xiii 

ber of the excellent illustrations which were used 
in connection with its serial publication. I also 
wish to acknowledge my indebtedness to Prof. 
Edward Channing, of Harvard University, for help- 
ful suggestions; to Mr. Charles G. Bennett, Secre- 
tary of the United States Senate, for generously 
providing me with necessary documents; and to 
the officials of Harvard University Library, par- 
ticularly Mr. Thomas J. Kiernan, for kindly and 
cordial co-operation in placing at my disposal Har- 
vard's rich collection of source material for the study 
of American history. 

H. Addington Bruce. 

Cambridge, Mass. 
February, 1909. 



THE ROMANCE OF AMERICAN 
EXPANSION 

CHAPTER I 

DANIEL BOONE AND THE OPENING UP OF THE WEST 

17^ ROM the strictly political point of view, the 
story of the territorial expansion of the United 
States begins with the Louisiana Purchase, the 
first acquisition of new land by the youthful Repub- 
lic. But precedent to the Louisiana Purchase, and 
rendering it inevitable, was an earlier movement 
set on foot while as yet the United States existed 
only in the imagination of a few prophetic souls 
who looked forward with buoyant hopes to the 
moment when the British colonies in the New World 
might become free to work out their destiny for 
themselves. From this movement, indeed, resulted 
not only the Louisiana Purchase, but all those other 
forward steps by which, within the space of less 
than a century, the American people obtained 
dominion from ocean to ocean; and in this move- 
ment is to be found, in no small measure, the expla- 
nation of the unparalleled rapidity with which the 



2 ROMANCE OF AMERICAN EXPANSION 

vast intervening territory was settled and developed. 
If it gave an irresistible impulse to territorial ex- 
tension, it likewise quickened and strengthened 
national characteristics without which territorial 
extension would not have been worth while. Knowl- 
edge of it is indispensable to a correct understand- 
ing of the country's growth. 

It began, roughly speaking, about the middle 
of the eighteenth century. Then, for the first time 
and after more than one hundred and fifty years 
of occupation, the colonists whose homes dotted 
the coastal region from Canada to the Floridas 
bent their way to the mysterious and unknown 
wilderness lying beyond the mountains that had 
so long marked their western boundary. Hitherto 
they had felt neither need nor desire to pass the 
barrier thrown up by nature; had, rather, clung 
instinctively to the narrow strip of land bordering 
the watery waste that separated them from the 
mother country. Here they had made clearings, 
created farm and plantation, built cabin and fort, 
village and town, always within easy reach if not 
within sight and sound of the sea. But now, under 
the pressure of economic stress and the hidden yet 
all-powerful influence of environment, they had 
acquired new standpoints, new yearnings, new char- 



DANIEL BOONE 3 

acteristics. Long years of successful battling with 
the forest and the savage had bred in them alert- 
ness, resourcefulness, self-reliance, and boundless 
optimism. Although they could not know it, the 
New World had given birth to a new nation. They 
chafed under the limitations imposed by the home 
Government, they chafed still more under the lim- 
itations of a territory which they had outgrown. 
Thence, as the spirit of independence and daring 
increased, arose the determination to press fonvard 
and master and occupy the transmontane wilder- 
ness. It mattered not that this was the home of 
warlike tribes who would be certain to contest their 
coming. Passage of the mountains and possession 
of the country beyond they must have. They only 
awaited a pilot to point out the way. 

Such a pilot they found in Daniel Boone. Boone, 
it is true, was by no means the first American to 
cross the mountains and explore the fertile Missis- 
sippi Valley.* But it was not until he opened the 
famous Wilderness Road that any systematic at- 
tempt at migration and colonization was made. 

* The names of the most important of Boone's predecessors will 
be found in R. G. Thwaites's "France in America" (vol. VII, p. 40, of 
the "American Nation" co-operative history of the United States), and 
in the same author's "Daniel Boone," pp. 85-88. A useful work on 
this subject is J. S. Johnston's "First Explorations of Kentucky," issued 
as No. 13 of the Filson Club's publications. 



4 ROMANCE OF AMERICAN EXPANSION 

Then, as by magic, a great tide of humanity surged 
forward, following the channel he had cut, and, 
after an outward rush of hundreds of miles, spread- 
ing itself through the timber-lands and grass-lands 
of what has since become known to us as the Middle 
West. By this hard and narrow path, so narrow 
that he who traversed it must do so afoot or on 
horseback, the immigrants poured in; and, other 
currents presently setting by mountain pass and 
river route, the entire valley, formerly the habitat 
of the roving red man, soon echoed to the ring of 
the woodsman's ax, heralding the establishment of 
civilization. Here was an expansion movement in 
the best sense of the term. Not rashful venturing 
or crude lust for gold had prompted the mighty 
exodus, but an all-absorbing desire to settle and 
cultivate and upbuild. Cleaving steadfastly to 
this ideal, the colonists, like their fathers before 
them, and overcoming even greater obstacles, la- 
bored so manfully and so wisely that, long before the 
death of their pathfinder, the rich region to which 
his Wilderness Road gave access had become the 
seat of prosperous commonwealths, partners in the 
Union born of the heroic War for Independence. 

All this Boone saw, in all this he shared, and not 
without reason did he declare in his old age that the 




Daniel Boone 
From the statue by Enid Yandell. 



DANIEL BOONE 5 

history of the settlement of the western country was 
his history. His entire career mirrored faithfully 
the sentiments, the sacrifices, the vicissitudes of the 
empire-builders to whom he opened the gateway to 
the Mississippi; and from his earliest youth he was 
an incarnation of the restless longing, the eager 
daring, the unconquerable resolution, and the sub- 
lime faith that carried the sons of those empire- 
builders from the Mississippi to the Pacific and 
beyond. By birth, training, and environment he 
was well fitted for the great task to which destiny 
had appointed him. Born of a pioneer Pennsyl- 
vania family, he first saw the light of day in a fron- 
tier setdement.* He was cradled to the whispering 
of the forest trees and the singing of the birds that 
flitted through their branches; and from the mo- 
ment that he was old enough to walk, the forest 
never called to him in vain. As a boy it was his 
delight to wander from the open fields, past the 
cordon of blackened stumps that marked the edge 
of the clearing, and on into the primeval depths, 
there to study the ways of nature and lay the foun- 

* Boone was the son of Squire and Sarah Boone, both of whom were 
Quakers, his father being an emigrant from Devonshire, his mother 
of Welsh extraction. He was born (November 2, 1734) in the township of 
Oley, Berks County, on a farm a few miles from the present city of 
Reading, and was the fourth son and sixth child in a family of eleven 
children. 



6 ROMANCE OF AMERICAN EXPANSION 

dations of his after mastery of woodcraft. As a boy, 
too, he became an adept with the rifle, and soon 
assumed the congenial task of supplying the family 
with meat. Herding in the summer, hunting in 
the winter, each succeeding year left him more 
keen, more self-reliant, more vigorous, and more 
enamored of the joys of the open. 

A new chapter, but not unlike the old, began 
when, at the age of eighteen, he migrated with his 
parents to the fair lands of the Yadkin Valley in 
the northwest corner of North Carolina. Here were 
fertile fields for farming, luxuriant meadows for 
grazing, and a wilderness with an abundance and 
a variety of game that far exceeded Boone's experi- 
ence in the older country. Here, also, as he soon 
discovered, was the material for romance, and, with 
an ardor that could not be gainsaid, he wooed the 
maiden of his choice.* But life was not all hunting, 

* Boone's wife was Rebecca Bryan, a daughter of Joseph Bryan, who, 
like the Boones, had migrated from Pennsylvania to North Carolina. 
Boone was twenty-one and Rebecca seventeen when they were married, 
and an interesting description of their appearance at the time of their 
wedding is quoted by Dr. Thwaites from an account written by a border 
historian who had made a close study of the family traditions: "Behold 
that young man exhibiting such unusual firmness and energy of charac- 
ter, five feet eight inches in height, with broad chest and shoulders, his 
form gradually tapering downward to his extremities; his hair mod- 
erately black; blue eyes arched with yellowish eyebrows; his lips thin, 
with a mouth peculiarly wide; a countenance fair and ruddy, with a 
nose a little bordering on the Roman order. Such was Daniel Boone, 



DANIEL BOONE 7 

dancing, love-making. Sterner duties had to be 
performed. There was the necessity of bread win- 
ning, and there was the necessity of guarding the 
cabin home from the sudden attack of the Indian 
roused at last to fury by the wily counsels of his 
French allies. The war-cloud that for seven years 
was to engulf the continent had already begun to 
gather, and with an anxious eye Boone and his 
fellows watched its approach. The news that the 
French were drawing nearer, were even building 
forts on land claimed by the British colonies, grated 
harshly on their ears; and when the more welcome 
tidings came that a punitive expedition was to set 
forth, there was no lack of volunteers. 

Thus it happened that Braddock's ill-fated army, 
which held in its ranks the immortal Washington, 
held another great American, Daniel Boone. And 
Boone, like Washington, survived the carnage of 

now past twenty-one, presenting altogether a noble, manly, prepossess- 
ing appearance. . . , Rebecca Bryan, whose brow had now been fanned 
by the breezes of seventeen summers, was, like Rebecca of old, 'very 
fair to look upon,' with Jet-black hair and eyes, complexion rather dark, 
and something over the common size of her sex; her whole demeanor 
expressive of her childlike artlessness, pleasing in her address, and 
unaffectedly kind in all her deportment. Never was there a more 
gentle, forbearing creature than this same youthful bride of the Yad- 
kin." (From R. G. Thwaites's "Daniel Boone," pp. 25-26.) Rebecca 
Boone brought up a large family of children, faithfully followed her 
husband in his many wanderings, and may well be regarded as a typical 
mother of the early West. 



8 ROMANCE OF AMERICAN EXPANSION 

that fearful day. Out of his baptism of fire he 
emerged a man, with all the trivialities of youth put 
far behind him. The year after Braddock's defeat 
saw him active in the futile defense of the frontier 
posts, now threatened by the Indians of the South. 
One by one the settlements were deserted, as the 
backwoods folk gradually lost hope and fled to the 
communities nearer the sea; and in time, though not 
until their case seemed desperate, the Boones fled 
too, locating in tide-water Virginia. Then, as the 
war still raged, the husband and father — for such 
Boone now was — hurried back to the wilderness, 
reaching it in time to take part in the campaign that 
compelled the Indians to sue for peace. His had 
been a bloody apprenticeship, but no less than the 
youthful years of roving it served him well for the 
work he was yet to do. 

On this work he did not definitely enter until six 
years after the great war had come to an end and 
the pretensions of France to New World supremacy 
had been forever blotted out by the battle of Quebec. 
Meanwhile, having brought his family back to the 
Yadkin, he spent his time much as of old, farming 
and hunting. But now his hunts were longer 
than before. The pressing of the frontier towards 
the mountains, the clearing of the forest, and the 



DANIEL BOONE 9 

increased number of those who joined in the chase, 
had driven the denizens of the wilds to take refuge 
with their remoter brethren on the far side of the 
rocky fastnesses. To the dauntless Boone, how- 
ever, the new difficulties and perils only added to 
the joys of hunting. Peak after peak he scaled, and 
the farther the game retreated the farther he pur- 
sued, only returning when his rifle had won him a 
goodly store of meat and furs. Unconsciously, but 
inevitably, he became inspired with the curiosity 
and enthusiasm of the explorer. As ridge upon 
ridge and forest after forest unfolded before him in 
glorious panorama, there rose unbidden the ques- 
tion of what lay beyond and the spontaneous but 
overpowering desire to go and find. 

It needed only a gentle stimulus to send him on 
a journey of discovery, and this stimulus was sup- 
plied by the arrival in the Yadkin Valley of a whilom 
fur trader, John Finley, or Findlay, who in years 
gone by had ranged all through the hidden land. 
To Boone and his scarcely less eager neighbors 
Finley described a country — which he called Ken- 
tucky — watered by magnificent streams, garbed in 
a marvelously luxurious herbage, splendidly tim- 
bered, and abounding in all sorts of game. It was, 
to be sure, a dark and bloody ground, a no-man's 



lo ROMANCE OF AMERICAN EXPANSION 

land, over which hostile tribes hunted and warred. 
But its exploration would well repay the risks in- 
volved, and he assured them that he knew a path 
leading to it — a path scarce deserving of the name, 
but still a path. Now followed days and nights of 
story- telling and discussion, and soon a little band 
of frontiersmen — only six, including Finley — 
had pledged themselves to make the long pil- 
grimage. 

May Day, 1769 — a date memorable in the annals 
of American expansion — they left their homes, and, 
crossing in turn the Blue Ridge and Stone and Iron 
Mountains, made their way to Powell's Valley, at 
that time the farthest limit of white habitation. 
Thence, under Finley's skilful guidance, they passed 
to Cumberland Gap, and through the gap by a 
hunter's trail, which finally brought them to the so- 
called warrior's trail. Following this, and journey- 
ing leisurely, they reached a small tributary of the 
Kentucky River, and here — perhaps because of 
the beauty of the surrounding country — they estab- 
lished their camp. Boone's autobiography, dic- 
tated, in substance if not in form, to the Kentucky 
historian, John Filson, is rich in passages revealing 
the profound impression made on him and his fellows 
by the novelty and picturesquencss of the scenes 



DANIEL BOONE u 

in which the party found themselves.* But they 
were not sentimentalists. They were rugged, hardy 
backwoodsmen, who had come to hunt and ex- 
plore. And they were speedily disillusioned of 
any idea that the western paradise was without 
its evils. 

Hunting one day with his brother-in-law, John 
Stuart, Boone was surprised by a band of Shawnee 
Indians, and, with Stuart, was compelled to lead 
them to the camp, where the others were like- 
wise made prisoners. Everything they possessed — 
horses, rifles, ammunition, furs, supplies — was 
taken from them, and they were then released with 
just enough provisions to carry them back to the 
settlements. They were warned that they were 
trespassers in a country which belonged exclusively 
to the red men, and that did they venture into it 
again their lives would pay the penalty. To most 
of them the hint was quite sufficient and they hur- 

* For instance, Filson records Boone as saying: "One day I under- 
took a tour through the country, and the diversity and beauties of 
nature I met with in this charming season, expelled every gloomy and vex- 
atious thought. Just at the close of day the gentle gales retired and 
left the place to the disposal of a profound calm. Not a breeze shook 
the most tremulous leaf. I had gained the summit of a commanding 
ridge, and, looking round with astonishing delight, beheld the ample 
plains, the beauteous tracts below. ... In such a diversity it was im- 
possible I should be disposed to melancholy. No populous city, with 
all the varieties of commerce and stately structures, could afford so 
much pleasure to my mind as the beauties of nature I found here." 



12 ROMANCE OF AMERICAN EXPANSION 

riedly started East, but Boone and Stuart, enraged 
at the thought of going home empty-handed, refused 
to accompany the others, trailed the Shawnees, and 
actually succeeded in recovering some of their prop- 
erty. Now, however, they in their turn were trailed 
and once more captured. An anxious week fol- 
lowed before Boone's native cunning contrived a 
way of escape. 

Even then he lingered in Kentucky, nothing 
daunted by the flight of Finley and the rest, nor by 
the tragic death of Stuart, shot soon afterwards by 
some lurking Indian. Without so much as a dog 
to bear him company he still roved and hunted 
and explored. For him solitude in the wilderness 
held no terrors; to him, as he trod the verdant car- 
pet beneath the arching trees, it was no wilderness, 
but a land of promise. Already, we may easily im- 
agine, he had reached the resolution to recross the 
distant mountains only for the purpose of bringing 
out his wife and children and carving for them a new 
home in this pleasant country where all nature 
seemed to smile. True prototype of the bold indi- 
vidualism that had already entered into the xAmer- 
ican blood, he felt an abiding self-confidence and 
independence, and asked no odds of any man. 
What though the farthest bound of civilization lay 



DANIEL BOONE 13 

far behind him? It must surely be advanced, and 
he would advance not with but before it. 

Willingly would we follow this unlettered, rough, 
uncouth, leather-stockinged forerunner of the coming 
age in his solitary wanderings and in the adventures 
that befell him, when, having returned to the Yad- 
kin, he found himself involved in another Indian 
war. But we must hasten to the moment of his 
reappearance in Kentucky, no longer as a member 
of a small exploring party, but as guide to a deter- 
mined company of pioneers.* It was fitting, in 
truth, that the palisaded settlement which they 
located near the Kentucky River should be named 
Boonesborough ; and fitting also that, as he often 
proudly asserted, his wife and daughters should be 
the first white women to stand on the banks of that 
stream. 

He had, however, brought his loved ones to a 
life far harder than even the stern existence that had 

* It was then (March- April, 1775) that the Wilderness Road was 
opened by Boone and a party of thirty expert woodsmen whom he had 
engaged in the interest of the Transylvania Company, organized by a 
number of wealthy North Carolinians for the purpose of colonizing 
Kentucky. One of the party, Felix Walker, has left a statement giving 
a brief account of the building of the famous road, and showing plainly 
the hardships and perils overcome by the roadmakers. This statement 
is printed as an appendix to George W. Ranck's "Boonesborough," 
one of the best of the exceedingly useful Filson Club publications. See 
also Thomas Speed's "The Wilderness Road," and A. B, Hulbert's 
"Boone's Wilderness Road." 



14 ROMANCE OF AMERICAN EXPANSION 

been their lot before. ^^ Brothers," said one of the 
chieftains with whom the settlers had bargained for 
their land, "it is a goodly country we give you, but 
we fear you will not find it easy to hold." This 
prediction was justified from the outset. Added 
to the natural difficulties incidental to the occupa- 
tion of a virgin territory was the implacable hostil- 
ity of the tribes who with reason feared this inva- 
sion of their hunting grounds. Boone sborough, 
like the other settlements now forming, was soon a 
center of savage warfare. The colonist, venturing 
from the shelter of the friendly stockade, did so 
with the knowledge that his life might be the price 
of his daring. The woods about teemed with red 
men, who, fortunately for the pioneers, lacked the 
strategic power that would have given them easy 
mastery. As it was, and despite this ever-preseilt 
menace, the men from the East not merely held 
their ground, but steadily received recruits ready, 
like themselves, to face all perils for the sake of a 
home where, as Boone tersely phrased it, they would 
have elbow room and breathing space. 

It is a grim but not wholly unattractive picture 
that has come down to us of the life the pathfinder 
and his comrades led, and a picture that affords a 
clearer understanding of the results that have flowed 



DANIEL BOONE 15 

from this eighteenth-century migration. It was 
not all hunting and fighting, although hunting and 
fighting were long its most conspicuous elements. 
There were times, which became more frequent, 
and of greater duration as the colonies were strength- 
ened, when the Indian withdrew completely; and 
in such times the work of cultivation went on apace. 
So soon as safety permitted , and often before it was 
really safe, there were dispersals from the parent 
settlements. It was every man's ambition to have 
a piece of land that he could call his own; and, 
being usually an agriculturist, it was his desire to have 
at least as large a holding as he and his children 
could work. Under the powerful stimulation of 
this twofold ideal of owning and working, great 
openings appeared where before had been unbroken 
forest, and the haunts of the buffalo and the deer 
were transformed into plowed fields and profitable 
pastures. Resting his rifle against a convenient 
stump, eye and ear alert for the least untoward 
sight or sound, the pioneer pressed the advantage 
his hardihood had gained. And in his labors, as 
in his simple joys, his wife and sons and daughters 
bore their part. 

Thus was born and fostered an even more intense 
spirit of independence and individualism than had 



i6 ROMANCE OF AMERICAN EXPANSION 

been developed in the coastal days — days, indeed, 
resembling these, but infinitely less trying. Then 
the pioneer always had at his back the familiar sea, 
on which he could rely did the elements or man 
render his position untenable. Now he had put the 
sea far behind him, while between him and it lay 
a mountain wall and hundreds of miles of well- 
nigh impassable wilderness. Small wonder that, 
taking account of the dangers passed and the ob- 
stacles conquered, his confidence in himself in- 
creased and, dimly enough at first, he began to 
crave further tests of his power. But, be it observed, 
his self-containedness and self-reliance were not 
accompanied by any loss of the social sentiment. 
On the contrary, in his rude settlements there was 
a greater solidarity of interests than more advanced 
communities can boast. The consciousness of isola- 
tion, if nothing else, tended to draw the people 
closer together. Was there a cabin to be built, 
willing hands united to lighten the burden. Was 
there a crop to be harvested, corn to be husked, a 
merry party quickly came together. Was there a 
death to be mourned, a grave dug, rough but kindly 
voices condoled with the bereaved, strong arms 
gently lowered the old friend to his last sleeping- 
place. And did the Indian threaten, swift riders 



DANIEL BOONE 17 

galloped from farm to farm, warning their inhab- 
itants to find safety in the communal stockade. 

Such alarms grew frequent with the outbreak of 
the War for Independence, and the subsequent 
invasion of the Kentucky country by the Indian 
allies of the British. Nor did respite come until 
George Rogers Clark executed his magnificent 
project of conquering the posts in the northwest. 
Boone did not follow Clark and his devoted little 
army of backwoodsmen, for the sufficient reason 
that he was at the time a prisoner in the hands of 
the Indians. With some thirty other Kentuckians, 
he had been taken captive at the Licking River, 
whither he had gone to make the salt of which his 
settlement stood in sore need. Happily, his repu- 
tation as a hunter and fighter insured him kind 
treatment. More than this, it earned for him, 
though much against his will, the high honor of 
adoption into the tribe by which he had been taken 
captive. Nothing in Boone's altogether astonishing 
career is more remarkable than the course he now 
pursued. The art of concealment had not been the 
least of the acquisitions of his long years of adven- 
ture, and with every outward sign of delight and 
enthusiasm he submitted to the painful ceremonies 
by which his white blood was "washed out" and his 



1 8 ROMANCE OF AMERICAN EXPANSION 

transformation into a full-fledged warrior effected. 
Soon, so successful was he in dissembling his true 
feelings, his captors came to regard him with a real 
affection. He hunted with them, smoked with 
them, feasted with them, in the paint and regalia 
of a veritable brave. But all the time his heart was 
in far-away Kentucky; and when he learned that 
a descent was planned on the post which had been 
named after him, and which was the only protection 
of those most dear to him, he realized that escape 
must be no longer delayed. Secreting a little ven- 
ison and starting for the hunt as was his wont, he 
struck boldly off. Well he knew pursuit would be 
instant and vindictive, for the Indians would view 
his flight as the blackest ingratitude. Doubling on 
his tracks, fording streams, utilizing every resource 
at the command of the skilled woodsman to baffle^ 
a following enemy, he pressed steadily ahead, un- 
mindful of hunger, fatigue, or injury. Five days 
afterwards, famished, footsore, and bleeding, he 
staggered into Boonesborough, where he came as 
one risen from the dead. A few hurried incoherent 
words, and the settlers understood. When the 
Indians appeared, they found the fort in readiness 
for them, and though the siege they laid was long 
and crafty, it ended in their discomfited retreat. 




Daniel Boone at Eighty- five 
From the only contemporary portrait of Boone, a painting made by Chester Harding 

in 1819. 
Reproduced, b\ permission, from " Daniel Boone," by Reuben G. Thicaites, published by 

D. Applelon &" Co. 



DANIEL BOONE 19 

The climax of Boone's career as an Indian-fighting 
pioneer came with the battle of the Blue Licks, one 
of the bloodiest and most disastrous in the annals 
of border warfare, and the miserable sequel to an 
event memorable as revealing to an unexampled 
degree the heroism of the mothers and daughters of 
the early West. One morning the inhabitants of 
an outlying post awoke to find themselves surrounded 
by some three or four hunded warriors, mostly 
fierce Wyandottes, under the command of the in- 
famous renegade Simon Girty.* Girty, it soon 
became apparent, hoped to gain an easy victory by 
feigning an attack at the main gate, and, when this 
should draw out the garrison, making the real as- 
sault with the remainder of his force, whom he would 
meantime keep hidden in the forest. Promptly the 
veteran backwoodsmen arranged a counter-ruse. 
But first it was necessary to procure a supply of 
water, for without water they knew they could not 
' withstand what was likely to prove a protracted 
siege. And for water, unfortunately, they were 

* There was also present with the invaders a small force of Canadian 
Rangers commanded by a loyalist, Capt. William Caldwell, who was 
the nominal head of the expedition. But it seems to be true, as Kentucky 
historians have claimed, that it was to Girty rather than to Caldwell 
that the Indians looked for leadership. For a good account of the life 
of this really remarkable "white Indian" consult Consul Willshire 
Butterfield's "History of the Girtys." 



20 ROMANCE OF AMERICAN EXPANSION 

dependent on a spring in the very midst of the lurk- 
ing Indians. 

It was now that the women proved their mettle. 
Hazarding their lives on the chance that the am- 
bushed foe would make no move until battle were 
given to the attacking party, they sallied out, bucket . 
in hand, and in single file moved up the narrow 
trail to the spring. They could plainly discern the 
glint of the rifles in the undergrowth, the waving 
feathers, the tawny forms, but never an indication 
did they give of the horror and dread that held their 
souls. One by one, chatting and laughing with 
sublime control, they reached the spring, dipped up 
its limpid water, and returned, heroines whose noble 
deed deserves to be forever remembered, not in 
Kentucky alone, but in all the land.* With their 
return the garrison acted. Shouting and hallooing 
to give an exaggerated idea of their number, a 
handful of volunteers hurried after the retreating 
Indians; and then, as the war-whoop went up from 
the woods behind and a savage troop hurled itself 
forward, a deadly volley blazed from the stockade, 

* Bryan's Station, situated on the road between the present cities 
of Lexington and Paris, was the scene of this notable instance of woman's 
bravery. It is pleasant to be able to record that a few years ago the 
Lexington Chapter of the Daughters of the American Revolution marked 
the site of the famous spring by building a memorial wall around it. 



DANIEL BOONE 21 

carrying to Girty ample and fearful intimation that 
his plans had miscarried. 

Before another daybreak, warned that relief expe- 
ditions were hurrying from Boonesborough and other 
settlements, the copper-colored foe withdrew, to be 
overtaken two days later, just after they had crossed 
the Licking River at the lower Blue Licks. The 
country thereabout was singularly wild and difficult, 
lending itself admirably to purposes of ambuscade, 
and Boone, who commanded part of the little army, 
was of the opinion that it would be well to await 
reinforcements before continuing the pursuit. But 
rasher counsels prevailed. Spurring his horse into 
the river, another officer called on all who were not 
cowards to follow him, and, stung by the taunt, the 
Kentuckians cast prudence to the winds, forded the 
Licking, and rushed tumultuously up the barren 
bluffs on its opposite side. Here a semblance of 
order was restored, and a march begun along a 
ridge that was flanked on each side by densely 
wooded ravines, reaching down to the edge of the 
river, which at this point took a wide circular sweep. 

In these ravines the Indians lay so skilfully con- 
cealed that not an inkling of their presence was had 
until the pursuers were almost upon them. Then 
the first knowledge came in a hail of bullets, fired 



22 ROMANCE OF AMERICAN EXPANSION 

at close range and inflicting terrible loss. The next 
moment the entrapped pioneers were in hand-to- 
hand conflict with a foe much stronger and not a 
whit less courageous than they. There could be 
but one issue. Breaking, they fled precipitately 
back to the river, the triumphant Wyandottes fast 
on their heels. Boone, who stood his ground until 
the flight became general, had the agonizing experi- 
ence of seeing his son fall mortally wounded by his 
side. Heedless of his own danger, he stooped, 
lifted him from the ground, and bore him swiftly 
down the rocky slope and into the Licking. Above 
him the massacre continued, about him the bullets 
rained — his one thought was of the child that had 
been, the man that was, gasping and groaning in 
his arms. In vain his devotion, in vain his mut- 
tered prayer. Before the river was crossed the 
death agony had come, and, with a hurried farewell 
caress, he laid down his inanimate burden and 
sought refuge in the forest, making his way by toil- 
some stages to the post whence the expedition had 
set out with such high hopes. And there, to his 
greater sorrow and wrath, he found the reinforce- 
ments whose coming he had urged his companions 
to await. The Indians had done their bloody work 
and had escaped. All that remained was to revisit 



DANIEL BOONE 23 

the battle-ground and bury the mutilated, unrecog- 
nizable dead. 

Yet there was a little more which could in time 
be done, and Boone played his part in the doing of 
it. One thousand strong, mounted and armed, 
the settlers met together from all sections of the 
western country, crossed the border, and hastened 
northwards, not halting until they reached the Indian 
towns of Chillicothe, Pickaway, and Willstown. 
Before their advance the tribesmen melted away, 
leaving the avengers to plunder and destroy at will. 
Great was the desolation they wrought — so great 
that never again did the red men attempt to invade 
Kentucky in force. The battle of the Blue Licks 
and its aftermath marked, in fact, a turning-point 
in the history of the settlement of the Middle West. 
Thereafter, though for long there were sporadic 
raids, and though for long the Indian continued to 
roam and slay, the future complete predominance 
of the white man was assured. And in this knowl- 
edge we may well take leave of the settlers and their 
pathfinder, for whom Fate still held in store much 
that was romantic and adventurous, and who, in a 
ripe old age, was to die as he had lived — well in 
advance of civilization, and with his gaze turned 
steadfastly in the direction of the setting sun. 



CHAPTER II 

THOMAS JEFFERSON AND THE LOUISIANA 
PURCHASE 

The first forward step in the territorial expansion 

of the United States became an accomph'shed fact 

December 17, 1803, when the French flag gave 

place to the Stars and Stripes at the city of New 

Orleans. With this act, and as the result not of 

conquest but of diplomacy, the American Republic 

that had come into being only a few years before 

extended its dominions from the Mississippi River 

to the Rocky Mountains and paved the way for its 

future pre-eminence among the nations of the world. 

Even to-day the giant stride thus taken staggers 

the imagination. Harassed by problems at home 

and abroad, critical problems which menaced the 

very existence of the new-born nation, and already 

in possession of a territory that seemed ample for 

the support of many future generations, there might 

well have been deemed cause for hesitancy when 

the opportunity offered for the acquirement of new 

24 



THOMAS JEFFERSON 25 

lands and with new lands added burdens. Yet 
that opportunity was grasped with stupendous celer- 
ity and with an enthusiasm which showed that, 
young as the nation was, it had begun to appreciate 
its power and its capabilities. That the opportu- 
nity came unsought only increases the marvel of the 
readiness with which it was seized. Pondering 
the pages of the early history of the United States, 
it is easy enough now to realize that from the mo- 
ment Daniel Boone opened the pathway to the West 
the future extension of the American people was a 
thing inevitable, and that had the Mississippi bar- 
rier not been raised when it was by the purchase of 
the vast territory known as Louisiana, it would have 
been raised at some later day, albeit at the cost not 
of dollars but of blood. But the actors in the mighty 
drama of the Louisiana Purchase could not see this 
as we of the twentieth century see it. They could 
only hope and dream, and all honor to them that 
they did hope and dream. To each one who played 
a part in securing for his country this its first and 
greatest territorial acquisition belongs imperish- 
able glory; and in especial must tribute be paid to 
the memory of Thomas Jefferson, the national chief 
executive who, discarding all political and partisan 
prejudices, gave effect to the agreement that had 



26 ROMANCE OF AMERICAN EXPANSION 

been reached in distant France, and by so doing 
rendered his noblest service to posterity. 

Jefferson, in truth, may fairly be accounted the 
first of the long line of notable American expansion- 
ists. There were others, like Alexander Hamilton, 
who cherished ideals of a greater America than 
that which had been born of the struggle for inde- 
pendence. But it was Jefferson's distinction to be 
the first to give form and reality to such ideals, and 
to transform dreams into deeds. No more singular 
mistake can be made than to imagine, as some have 
imagined, that his share in the Louisiana Purchase 
was purely fortuitous, and that in acting as he did 
he merely pursued a policy of opportunism founded 
on what he perceived to be the will of the people. 
On the contrary, the Louisiana Purchase meant to 
him the realization of a long and ardently cherished 
desire, a consummation none the less welcome 
because it came so unexpectedly. It was the good 
fortune of the nation that he occupied the Presi- 
dential chair at the moment when Napoleon found 
it necessary to relinquish his grasp of the rich do- 
main wrung from the yielding Spaniard. Another, 
with less penetrating vision into the possibilities and 
exigencies of the years to come, would have faltered 
and let slip the golden opportunity. But Jefferson, 




Thomas Jeffersox 

From a crayon drawing, now in the possession of Dr. W. C. N. Randolph, of 

Charlottesville, Virginia, the great-grandson of Jefferson. 



I 



THOMAS JEFFERSON 27 

true expansionist, one is tempted to write greatest of 
American expansionists, understood, and, under- 
standing, acted. 

There is temptation, too, to declare that it was 
his destiny to crown his wonderful career by the 
Louisiana Purchase. Certainly the story of his 
life, when considered in relation to the Purchase, 
tends to bear out this view. He was born April 13, 
1743, in a Virginia farmhouse among the foothills of 
the Blue Ridge. From his father, a sturdy yeoman, 
liimself Virginia born, he inherited a stalwart frame, 
a stout constitution, an independent and self-reliant 
spirit, and a lasting love for the life outdoors. His 
mother, likewise a Virginian, and daughter of one of 
the proudest and wealthiest families of the colony, 
bequeathed him the gentler qualities of kindh- 
ness, affabihty, and courtesy; and, it is to be in- 
ferred from the little that has been recorded of her, 
also blessed him with the literary talent which was 
to find immortal expression in after years. Added 
to the happy combination of characteristics with 
which he was thus endowed was the beneficent 
influence of the environment of his infancy and 
early youth. From the wilderness which stretched 
for miles about the little clearing, he drew in with 
his first breath sentiments of freedom and liberality. 



28 ROMANCE OF AMERICAN EXPANSION 

As he grew older and roamed through the forest gun 
in hand, these sentiments were deepened by con- 
templation of the open and untrammeled ways of 
nature. He perceived, too, in the broad vistas of 
woodland, valley, mountain range, and stream, a 
perpetual symbol of the vastness and grandeur and 
opportunities of the land in which he lived. And 
doubtless, like Daniel Boone, himself at that time 
serving his apprenticeship in another corner of the 
border, he felt the frontiersman's longing to press 
on and on through the cool green spaces to the 
mountains, and beyond the mountains to the mysteri- 
ous depths in which each night the sun sank to 
repose. 

But there were ties that held him in the East. 
At the age of seventeen behold him, tall, sinewy, 
sandy-haired, and freckled, a trifle awkward, but 
of boundless good nature, infinite hope, and a radi- 
ant smile, mounting his horse and by leisurely stages 
making his way from the mountains to the colony's 
quaint old capital, there to begin the education that 
would fit him for the one career open to well-con- 
nected and ambitiously inclined Virginians. Ear- 
nest, brilliant, capable, such was the impression he 
made that when, after two years of unremitting 
effort, he graduated triumphantly from college and 



THOMAS JEFFERSON 29 

began the study of law, the famous George Wythe, 
leader of the Virginia bar, willingly received him 
into his office. And so thoroughly did he command 
confidence and esteem that upon his admission to 
practise clients came to him a plenty, country bred 
though he was * A little later, and in the very year 
that Boone began his epoch-making pilgrimage 
to Kentucky, he found himself a member of the 
Virginia House of Burgesses, fairly launched on 
his long and useful poKtical career. 

As the event at once proved, he had, throughout 
his years of city life, clung steadfastly to the prin- 
ciples and yearnings implanted in him by the influ- 
ences of childhood, influences which were reinforced 
by frequent and prolonged visits to the well-loved 
home, now transformed from wilderness to a pros- 
perous plantation. Scarcely had he taken his seat 
among his fellow-legislators, before the House, 
already restive under the increasing impositions of 
the home authorities, was dissolved by an irate 
Governor; and immediately, with Washington, Lee, 
Henry, and others to whom after events were to 

* Jefferson left no record of his business before the lower courts, 
but during his first year as a practising lawyer, he had sixty-eight cases 
before the General Court, during his second year one hundred and 
fifteen cases, and during his third year one hundred and ninety-eight. 
His first year's practise before the General Court alone netted him nearly 
three hundred pounds. 



30 ROMANCE OF AMERICAN EXPANSION 

bring the guerdon of immortality, Jefferson began 
the campaign of agitation and exhortation that 
culminated in the historic document which com- 
memorates for all time his first great service to his 
fellow-men. For the present purpose, however, 
there is no need to follow him through this impress- 
ive period of his life. But there is vital need to 
pause for a moment and recall an event which, 
occurring in the year after the Declaration of Inde- 
pendence had been announced to the world, and 
when Jefferson was once more a Virginia legislator, 
turned his attention as never before to the region 
beyond the mountains, and may properly be said 
to mark the starting-point of the policy that found 
fruition in the Louisiana Purchase. 

This event was the arrival in Virginia of George 
Rogers Clark, fresh from the wilds and eager to 
secure authorization for his daring project of seizing 
the British posts on the northwest frontier, and thus 
stemming the tide of Indian invasion that threat- 
ened to overwhelm the border settlements. To 
Virginia he came because, as he well knew, Virginia 
laid claim to all the territory stretching westward 
from her southern boundary to the Mississippi and 
northward to the Great Lakes. Listening to his 
forceful eloquence, and following with keen inter- 



THOMAS JEFFERSON 31 

est the romantic vicissitudes and the splendid triumph 
of the enterprise that resulted from his visit East, 
Jefferson's heart went out with the liveliest sympathy 
to Clark and to all who were striving with him to 
obtain mastery of the wilderness. If he had not 
done so before, he fully appreciated now the sig- 
nificance of the migration that had set in by way of 
Boone's trail. And, as may be seen from his cor- 
respondence, as soon as he became Governor of 
Virginia — that is to say, within a few months after 
Clark had finally established himself at Kaskaskia 
and Vincennes — he was prompt in taking measures 
to strengthen the defenses of the western country, 
and, as shown by the creation of the Virginia Land 
Office, to promote its settlement.* To the border 
folk, likewise, he instinctively turned when hard 
pressed by the still vindictive foe. ^'I have a pecul- 
iar confidence in the men from the western side of 
the mountains," was his message to Clark in the 
opening month of the critical year 1781. There- 
after, to the day of his death, his ^'peculiar confi- 
dence'' continued unabated. 

It would, in fact, be difficult to name a Revolu- 
tionary statesman to whom the war brought a wider 

* p. L. Ford's Edition, "The Writings of Thomas Jefiferson," vol. 
II> P- 293, et seq. 



32 ROMANCE OF AMERICAN EXPANSION 

understanding of the temper and aspirations of 
the transmontane settlers. The surroundings amid 
which he had spent his childhood and early youth 
and the characteristics acquired from his rugged 
and outright father had, of course, laid a solid foun- 
dation for such an understanding. But not until 
war came and the long-persisting controversies with 
the mother country had been submitted to the arbitra- 
ment of arms did the opportunity offer for close 
contact with and just appreciation of the men who 
were taking part in the westward movement. With 
the outbreak of hostilities, however, and in especial 
from the moment he became Governor of a State 
that claimed sovereignty over almost the whole of 
the western country, no other leader in the colossal 
struggle was so happily situated to glimpse the nas- 
cent Republic in its entirety. His earlier activity 
in connection with the preliminaries of the Revolu- 
tion had made him well acquainted with the spirit 
of the seaboard people. Now he obtained an 
equally clear knowledge of the spirit of the people 
who had migrated from the seaboard. And, sym- 
pathizing with the one as truly and profoundly as 
with the other, perceiving their mutual jealousies, 
but perceiving also their mutual interests, it was in- 
evitable that his view should broaden, that to the 



THOMAS JEFFERSON 33 

ideal of independence he should add the ideal of 
nationality and of national growth. 

It was some time, however, before the conse- 
quences of his war-time experience became appar- 
ent. Chagrined at the criticisms passed upon his 
official conduct, he refused to stand for re-election 
as Governor, and went into a retirement that was 
prolonged by the grief into which he was cast through 
the loss of his beloved wife. But even in retirement 
there are indications — though scanty, for little of 
his correspondence during this period has been 
preserved — that he kept a close watch on the trend 
of events and was eager to advance the interests 
not of Virginia only, but of all the country. And, 
once he assumed again the burdens and responsibil- 
ities of public life, the evidence of his really national- 
istic sentiments rapidly increases. As a member 
of the Continental Congress in the spring of 1784 
he was prominent in the cession to the Union of 
the great territory in the Northwest to which Virginia 
laid claim, and it was he who drew up the first plan 
for the government of the region thus ceded. Sim- 
ilarly he busied himself in devising measures for 
the wise distribution of the public lands, and, after 
he had entered on his treaty-framing mission abroad, 
in laboring to bring about an adjustment of the 



34 ROMANCE OF AMERICAN EXPANSION 

complications which had developed in the South- 
west owing to the evident intention of Spain to close 
the navigation of the Mississippi, the one commercial 
highway affording the pioneers of Kentucky and 
Tennessee ready access to the markets of the East. 
It was this short-sighted policy that gave rise to the 
agitation which finally resulted in the Louisiana 
Purchase ; and long before the Purchase was effected 
it was this same policy, reviewed in the light of a 
sublime confidence in his countrymen's potential- 
ities, that started dreams of expansion in the mind of 
the already nationalistic Jefferson. 

The rapidity with which these dreams took form, 
and the early date at which he began to ponder 
means of giving them reality, may be seen from 
a letter of January 25, 1786, written to Archibald 
Stuart from Paris, where Jefferson had now suc- 
ceeded Franklin as Minister to France. Stuart, 
seemingly, had called his attention to the growing 
spirit of anger and unrest that was taking posses- 
sion of the Westerners in consequence of the Gov- 
ernment's failure to arrive at an understanding with 
Spain, and Jefferson wrote in reply: ''I fear from 
an expression in your letter that the people of Ken- 
tucky think of separating not only from Virginia 
(in which they are right) but also from the Confed- 



THOMAS JEFFERSON 35 

eracy. I own I should think this a most calamitous 
event, and such an one as every good citizen on 
both sides should set himself against. Our present 
federal limits are not too large for good government, 
nor will the increase of votes in Congress produce 
any ill effect. On the contrary, it will drown the 
little divisions at present existing there. Our Con- 
federacy must be viewed as the nest from which all 
America, North and South, is to be peopled. We 
should take care, too, not to think it for the interest 
of that great continent to press too soon on the 
Spaniards. Those countries cannot be in better 
hands. My fear is that they are too feeble to hold 
them till our population can be sufficiently advanced 
to gain it from them piece by piece.'' * 

Bearing in mind the date of this letter and the 
sentiments it expressed, the inference is irresistible 
that ideas of expansion lay at the bottom of the 
proposal he soon afterwards made to the Connecti- 
cut traveler, Ledyard, then in Paris, and panting 
to achieve new laurels as an explorer. As Jefferson 
himself tells the story in his Memoir of Meriwether 
Lewis, he suggested to Ledyard that he traverse 
Russia to Kamchatka, cross to Nootka Sound, and 
thence ^^fall down into the latitude of the Missouri, 

* Ford's Edition, vol. IV, pp. 188-89. 



36 ROMANCE OF AMERICAN EXPANSION 

and penetrate to and through that to the United 
States." This would indeed be a personal triumph 
for Ledyard, since no white man had as yet crossed 
the continent from ocean to ocean; and to the 
United States it would at least mean some knowl- 
edge of the geography and resources of the unex- 
plored territory between the Mississippi and the 
Pacific. It is significant to note, also, that Jeffer- 
son made no attempt to secure from Spain permis- 
sion for this journey through her colonial domain; 
his only care was to gain the consent of Russia, and 
it was in consequence of the unexpected withdrawal 
of that consent, for reasons which must be left to 
conjecture, that Ledyard ultimately found it im- 
possible to execute his mission, being arrested by 
order of the Empress when within two hundred 
miles of Kamchatka and hurried to Poland, whence 
he sadly carried to Jefferson the news of his failure. 
The latter, meantime, had been wrought to a 
high pitch of indignation by learning that, in order 
to effect a favorable commercial treaty with Spain, 
Congress might waive the Mississippi claims. *'I 
will venture to say," he protested to Madison, in 
a letter from Paris, January 30, 1787, ''that the act 
which abandons the navigation of the Mississippi 
is an act of separation between the eastern and the 



THOMAS JEFFERSON 37 

western country." * Yet he realized only too well 
that the United States was in no position to accept 
the alternative suggested by Jay the year before, 
when he gave it as his opinion that American rights 
on the Mississippi could be secured only ^'by arms 
or by treaty." To the Kentuckians, therefore, 
Jefferson counseled patience, advising them "to 
defer pushing their right to that navigation to extrem- 
ity as long as they can do without it," f and to await 
if possible the outbreak of a European war when 
Spain would be less favorably situated to resist the 
American demands. Perhaps he also had in view 
the maintenance of the status quo until the United 
States should be strong enough to begin the process 
of absorption depicted in his letter to Stuart. At 
any rate, soon after his return from France to enter 
Washington's Cabinet, we find him making a first 
tentative move in the direction of actual expansion. 
The Mississippi question was still unsettled, and 
had, in fact, grown more acute. Immigrants by 
the thousand were pouring from the tide-water 
country into the region watered by the lordly river 
and its tributaries, but Spain stubbornly adhered 
to her refusal to grant their produce-laden vessels 

* Ford's Edition, vol, IV, p. 363. 
t Ford's Edition, vol. V, p. 17. 



38 ROMANCE OF AMERICAN EXPANSION 

free passage to the Gulf. True to her standards 
of diplomatic dilatoriness, she shuffled, evaded, 
postponed. Accordingly, it became one of Jeffer- 
son's first tasks as Secretary of State to spur the 
American representative at Madrid, Charge d' Af- 
faires Carmichael, to renewed efforts to reach a defi- 
nite understanding; and in so doing he made a most 
significant suggestion. It would be well, he in- 
structed Carmichael, to propose to the Spanish 
Government not simply a treaty securing the desired 
privilege of navigation, but a treaty whereby Spain 
would cede to the United States all her territory on 
the east side of the Mississippi ^^on condition that 
we guarantee all her possessions on the western 
waters of that river, she agreeing, further, to sub- 
sidize us if the guarantee brings us into war.'' 
To convince Spain that the United States would 
rest content with such a cession, and would make 
no attempt to dislodge her from the western bank 
of the Mississippi, he also instructed Carmichael to 
assure King Charles and his Ministers that it was 
not in the interest of the United States to obtain 
possession of trans-Mississippi territory, and that 
a policy of conquest had no place in the American 
scheme of government. To quote his own words: 
* Conquest not in our principles; inconsistent with 



THOMAS JEFFERSON 39 

our government.'' * That this, however, was simply 
a diplomatic subterfuge, and that he really enter- 
tained radically different ideas, is strikingly exhib- 
ited by a letter he wrote to Washington less than a 
year later, when Spain had embarked on the policy 
of endeavoring to alienate the western settlers from 
their allegiance to the United States. ^^ Governor 
Quesada," he reported to the President, ^^by order 
of his court is inviting foreigners to go and settle in 
Florida. This is meant for our people. ... I 
wish a hundred thousand of our inhabitants would 
accept the invitation. It will be the means of deliv- 
ering to us peaceably what may otherwise cost us 
a war. In the meantimie we may complain of this 
seduction of our inhabitants just enough to make 
them believe we think it very wise policy for them 
and confirm them in it. This is my idea of it." f 

Clearly, the politic Jefferson did not shrink from 
adopting the methods of Old World diplomacy. 
There is reason, also, for suspecting that his pro- 
gram was not confined to the prospective annex- 
ation of Florida. In 1792 the opportune arrival 
of a French botanist, Andre Michaux, commis- 
sioned by his Government to study the flora of the 

* Ford's Edition, vol. V, p. 230. 
t Ford's Edition, vol. V, p. 316. 



40 ROMANCE OF AMERICAN EXPANSION 

United States, suggested to Jefferson a renewal of 
the Ledyard scheme of traversing the continent. 
It is generally thought that in this he was animated 
by a purely scientific zeal; but, in the light of 
subsequent events, a different interpretation seems 
warranted from the fact that the instructions drawn 
up for Michaux by Jefferson himself indicate that 
the great object of the proposed expedition was 
"that you seek for and pursue that route which 
shall form the shortest and most convenient com- 
munication between the higher parts of the Missouri 
and the Pacific Ocean." * It is noteworthy, too, 
that, like the Ledyard expedition, Michaux's under- 
taking came to grief through the intervention of a 
foreign Government, the French Minister recalHng 
the botanist after he had proceeded as far as Ken- 
tucky. And it may be added in passing, when the 
project was next revived, in the midst of the excite- 
ment engendered by the news that Spain had ceded 
Louisiana to France, it was broached in a way and 
under circumstances that have led the latest historian 
of the Purchase period, Edward Channing, to sug- 
gest that Jefferson may have had in mind a possible 
seizure of the region through which his explorers 
afterwards made their way on their historic over- 

* Ford's Edition, vol. VI, p. i6o. 



THOMAS JEFFERSON 41 

land journey. ^'The Louisiana Purchase," dryly 
observes Professor Channing, ^^came in the niek of 
time to save Jefferson from violating the code of 
international ethics." * 

Nothing developed from the proposal that Spain 
cede her eastern possessions to the United States; 
but in 1795 a treaty was finally effected securing to 
the people of Kentucky and Tennessee, though for 
only three years, the right to use the Mississippi, 
and to transship their products at New Orleans from 
river craft to ocean-going vessels. Unhappily, on 
the expiration of the period named, the old-time 
prohibition was renewed, and at once the Westerners, 
whose wrath was increased by appreciation of the 
fleeting prosperity they had enjoyed, besieged the 
National Government with complaints and de- 
mands for redress. Again there was talk of con- 
quest, even of secession. Jefferson, so far as can 
be judged from his writings, took no very active part 
in the initial efforts to cope with a problem that had 
once more become of the utmost menace to the Amer- 
ican body politic. But, from what has already been 
said, it is not difficult to imagine the interest with 
which he watched the rising storm and noted how 

* Edward Channing's "The Jeffersonian System," p. 88. Pub- 
lished as vol. XII of the "American Nation" co-operative history of 
the United States. 



42 ROMANCE OF AMERICAN EXPANSION 

rapidly the country was drifting to a settlement with 
Spain along the lines laid down in his memorandum 
to Carmichael, nearly ten years before. Not even 
he, however, could foresee the singular turn affairs 
were to take before a settlement was actually reached. 
The Louisiana country, it must be remembered, 
had originally belonged to France. Basing her 
claim on the explorations of La Salle and the gal- 
lant adventurers who came after La Salle, she had 
until the French and Indian War exercised dominion 
over the fertile lands stretching from the Gulf of 
Mexico to her Canadian possessions, and from the 
Appalachian to the Rocky Mountains. Never had 
she become reconciled to the cruel fate that ousted 
her completely from these fair territories, compell- 
ing her to turn them over in part to England as the 
result of conquest, and in part to Spain as the price 
of a Spanish aUiance. For a time, torn and weak- 
ened by the internal dissensions that culminated in 
the Revolution, she was obhged to put aside all 
thought of endeavoring to re-establish her sover- 
eignty overseas. But with the advent of Napoleon 
and the recrudescence of her vigor under his master- 
ful impulse, her hopes rose anew. To Napoleon 
himself nothing seemed more desirable than to 
supplement his Old World program of French 



THOMAS JEFFERSON 43 

aggrandizement by rebuilding the New World 
empire of France; and, appreciating the essential 
weakness of Spain, he resolved to make a beginning 
by securing from her a retrocession of Louisiana, 
and, if possible, a cession of the Floridas also. 
Quietly and expeditiously he went to work, dangling 
before the dynastically ambitious Spanish court 
the bait of a rich Italian principality. The Flor- 
idas he failed to obtain, but, by the secret treaty of 
San Ildefonso, October i, 1800, it was agreed that, 
in return for the elevation of King Charles's son-in- 
law, the Duke of Parma, to the throne of Tuscany, 
Spain would reconvey Louisiana to France. 

Most mischievous to Spain, this absurdly one- 
sided bargain, and the more one-sided since Napo- 
leon failed to fulfil his share of the agreement, 
promised to be no less mischievous to the United 
States by imposing upon her a powerful and aggres- 
sive neighbor. But it was months before so much 
as a rumor of the projected retrocession reached the 
shores of America, where, in the meantime, concil- 
iatory action by the Spanish authorities at New 
Orleans had placated the wrathful men of the West, 
and where Jefferson had replaced Adams in the 
Presidential chair. When the news did leak out, 
it created the greatest uneasiness. Jefferson, who 



44 ROMANCE OF AMERICAN EXPANSION 

in his inaugural address had indulged his expan- 
sionist ideas so far as to assure his countrymen that 
they were "advancing rapidly to destinies beyond 
the reach of mortal eye," frankly voiced his alarm. 
"We fear," he v^rote to his son-in-law, Thomas 
Mann Randolph, May 14, 1801, "that Spain is 
ceding Louisiana to France, an inauspicious cir- 
cumstance to us;"* and similarly twelve days later 
in a letter to Monroe, "There is considerable rea- 
son to apprehend that Spain cedes Louisiana and 
the Floridas to France. It is a policy very unwise 
in both, and very ominous to us." f There was 
at the time no American Minister to France, but 
instructions were at once sent to the Minister to 
Spain urging him to ascertain what truth there 
might be in the reports concerning the retrocession. 
No satisfactory intelligence being obtained, the 
vacancy to France was now filled by the appoint- 
ment of Robert R. Livingston, who was directed 
to press diligently for an acknowledgment of 
Napoleon's intentions. Still nothing definite could 
be learned, and at last, determined to make plain 
to France the attitude of the United States, Jeffer- 
son personally addressed to Livingston a long letter 

* Massachusetts Historical Society's "Collections," 7th series, vol. 
I> P- 95- 

t Ford's Edition, vol. VIII, p. 58. 



THOMAS JEFFERSON 45 

of instructions, bidding him let Napoleon know 
that *^the day that France takes possession of New 
Orleans fixes the sentence which is to restrain her 
forever within her low-water mark. It seals the 
union of two nations who in conjunction can main- 
tain exclusive possession of the ocean. From that 
moment we must marry ourselves to the British 
fleet and nation." * 

Remembering the animosity with which Jeffer- 
son had regarded England and all things English 
since the days of the struggle for independence, and 
the affection he had hitherto entertained for France, 
nothing shows more clearly how thoroughly aroused 
he was. But it is to be observed that his main care 
was not to keep the French out of Louisiana, but 
to keep them out of New Orleans, and thus make 
sure that the gateway to the world's markets would 
remain open to the Mississippi folk. Already Liv- 
ingston had been instructed to propose a cession of 
the Floridas and New Orleans to the United States, 
and in this same letter Jefferson bade him inform 
the French Government that such a cession 'Svould 
certainly, to a great degree, remove the causes of 
jealousy and irritation between us." Still, he sig- 
nificantly added, ^'we should consider New Orleans 

* Ford's Edition, vol. VIII, p. 145. 



46 ROMANCE OF AMERICAN EXPANSION 

and the Floridas as equivalent for the risk of a quar- 
rel with France produced by her vicinage."* In 
other words, it would be the part of wisdom for 
France to forego altogether her contemplated occu- 
pation of Louisiana. Bold language this, but 
language that would have had no effect whatever 
upon the unshakable Napoleon had it not been for 
the chance concurrence of action proceeding from 
quite another quarter. 

Fully resolved to carry through his plans, de- 
terred only by the persistency with which the heroic 
negro insurrectionists of San Domingo engaged the 
troops designed for the occupation of Louisiana, 
Napoleon suddenly found himself face to face with 
a war-intending England. Lacking command of 
the sea, he at once realized the necessity of aban- 
doning his New World enterprise. But he could still 
hope to win profit from it, profit in money and profit 
in friendship. England, he told himself, must never 
win Louisiana. Nor, though he had not paid for 
it, would he hand it back to Spain. He would, 
instead, transfer it to the United States, which, he 
did not doubt, would be willing to pay handsomely 
for it, and would at the same time forgive and forget 
past injuries and be drawn into closer relations with 

* Ford's Edition, vol. VIII, p. 146. 



THOMAS JEFFERSON 47 

France than ever before. And thus it happened 
that when Jefferson's envoys, Livingston and 
Monroe, in the spring of 1803 formally approached 
him with an offer for the purchase of New Orleans 
and the Floridas, they were informed that France 
did not have the Floridas to sell, but was quite 
willing to part not only with New Orleans, but 
with all Louisiana. 

There is nothing to show that this counter-offer 
had been anticipated and that Monroe and Living- 
ston carried secret instructions authorizing them to 
accept it. But, confident that their action would 
be indorsed by Jefferson, Congress, and the nation, 
they did not hesitate. Less than a month after 
Monroe's arrival the treaty was signed, doubling 
the area of the United States at the cost of a beggarly 
fifteen million dollars, and setting the seal on her 
future predominance over the North American 
continent. Well might Livingston exclaim: '^We 
have lived long, but this is the noblest work of our 
lives!" And well might Jefferson feel, when the 
good news from France reached America, that his 
dreams were at last coming true and that he had 
been justified in viewing the ''Confederacy" as ''the 
nest from which all America, North and South, is to 
be peopled." 



48 ROMANCE OF AMERICAN EXPANSION 

There were, to be sure, certain phases of the 
Purchase that troubled him. A stickler for strict 
construction of the Constitution, he could find no- 
where in the Constitution authority for the acquisi- 
tion of territory; and, moreover, such acquisition 
would do violence to another of his strongest polit- 
ical beliefs — the belief that government derives its 
just powers from the consent of the governed, it 
being evident that the people of Louisiana had had 
no voice in the transaction. But, Constitution or 
no Constitution, acquiescence or non-acquiescence, 
the Purchase, he felt, must be carried through. 
Writing, in August, to the Kentucky Senator, John 
C. Breckinridge, he declared: ''Objections are rais- 
ing to the Eastward against the vast extent of our 
boundaries, and propositions are made to exchange 
Louisiana, or a part of it, for the Floridas. But 
... we shall get the Floridas without, and I would 
not give one inch of the waters of the Mississippi 
to any nation, because I see in a light very impor- 
tant to our peace an exclusive right to its naviga- 
tion, and the admission of no nation into it, but as 
into the Potomac and the Delaware with our con- 
sent and under our poHce." ^ He did, indeed, as a 
compromise with his fears regarding the unconsti- 

* Ford's Edition, vol. VIII, p. 243. 




The Signing of the Louisiana Purchase Treaty 
From the commemorative statue at the St. Louis Exposition. 



THOMAS JEFFERSON 49 

tutional character of the transaction, suggest that 
the Constitution be amended to permit the inclusion 
of Louisiana within the boundaries of the United 
States, and went so far as to draft an amendment to 
that effect. But when Livingston sent him word 
that there was danger of Napoleon's repenting the 
bargain and repudiating his agreement, he hesi- 
tated no longer, summoned Congress in extra ses- 
sion, and forced the treaty to a speedy and a happy 
vote. 

Nor, when we recall his earlier declarations with 
respect to the future of the United States, can it be 
deemed surprising that he chose to appear a mon- 
ster of inconsistency rather than sacrifice the splen- 
did opportunity that so suddenly presented itself. 
On the contrary, it would have been surprising had 
he not pursued exactly the course he did. And, 
as a matter of fact, there was at bottom no incon- 
sistency in his conduct. Uphold as he might State 
rights, limitations of government, and the Hke, not 
even Hamilton was more truly nationalistic at heart 
than was Thomas Jefferson. His fundamental prin- 
ciple was the welfare of the nation, the making of 
the nation really great and really strong. More 
than this, as we have seen, his bounding vision 
overleaped the confines of space and time, hopefully 



50 ROMANCE OF AMERICAN EXPANSION 

anticipating the moment when his country would 
attain those ''destinies beyond the reach of mortal 
eye." He did not expect to live to see the first of 
the great extensions of which he spoke so prophet- 
ically, and to bring about which he labored so ear- 
nestly. But a kindly fortune granted him that 
boon, and when the hour struck he was not found 
wanting. 



CHAPTER III 

ANDREW JACKSON AND THE ACQUISITION OF FLORIDA 

In all the steps whereby the American people 
extended their dominion from sea to sea, the ele- 
ment of inevitability is never so clearly discernible 
as in the acquisition of Florida. Desirable before, 
possession of Florida became essential to the wel- 
fare of the nation from the moment of the Louisiana 
Purchase. Its geographical situation gave it com- 
mand over the marine highw^ay between the old 
and the new sections of the United States, and in 
alien hands it thus constituted not merely an un- 
welcome break in the continuity of the coast-line, 
but a possible menace to American shipping and 
commerce. There was always the danger, too, and 
a danger which speedily proved very real, that in 
time of war it might be utilized by a foreign power 
as a base for military operations. Its owner, Spain, 
was notoriously WTak, as had been amply demon- 
strated by Napoleon's course in the matter of 
Louisiana; and it was more than doubtful whether 

SI 



52 ROiSIANCE OF AMERICAN EXPANSION 

she could enforce the neutrality of her distant 
province against any power whatsoever. For the 
same reason, it was to be feared that if the United 
States did not acquire Florida for herself, ownership 
might pass to a country stronger than Spain and by 
so much the more undesirable as a neighbor. 

There were also minor but still cogent considera- 
tions urging immediate effort to extend American 
sovereignty to the peninsula. It w^as watered, in 
part, by navigable streams affording American 
settlers a Gulf outlet for their products, and experi- 
ence had shown that so long as Spain retained con- 
trol of these streams their navigation would be 
impeded. Again, notwithstanding Spain's centuries 
of occupation, no successful attempt at colonization 
and settlement had -been made, and, outside of a 
few scattered and paltry garrison towns, Florida 
was almost wholly given over to the wilderness and 
the savage, and was infested by a motley population 
of Indians, fugitive slaves, pirates, and outlaws of 
every sort, who waged a vindictive warfare against 
the frontier inhabitants of Louisiana and Georgia. 
This also, in the case of the Indians at any rate, 
despite the fact that Spain had by treaty solemnly 
pledged herself to repress hostile outbreaks against 
the border folk. To tell the truth, she was not 



ANDREW JACKSON 53 

strong enough to keep her obh'gation ; but her failure 
to do so only brought home more forcibly to the 
American Government the necessity of terminating 
a state of affairs that promised to grow constantly 
more dangerous to the peace and well-being of the 
Republic. Indeed, as developed in the course of 
our study of the Louisiana Purchase, so early as 
1790 a formal proposition was framed for the pur- 
chase of Florida, and it was Florida rather than 
Louisiana that was kept steadily in viev/ through- 
out the negotiations which ended so happily in 1803. 
Immediately thereafter the question of the acquisi- 
tion of Florida was raised anew, to remain unsettled, 
however, until fifteen years later the fearless patriot- 
ism of one of the greatest of Americans forced it to 
an issue in accord with the will and necessity of the 
nation. 

At the outset, it must be said, the United States 
committed a tactical blunder quite sufficient to 
account for the difficulty experienced in securing 
Spain's consent to part with her peninsular posses- 
sion. Ever since 1763 Florida had been divided 
into two parts — East Florida, including all of the 
peninsula and westward along the Gu]f coast to the 
Apalachicola River, and West Florida, continuing 
along the coast from the Apalachicola to the Mis- 



54 ROMANCE OF AMERICAN EXPANSION 

sissippi. Previous to that time, while the French 
were in possession of Louisiana, that part of West 
Florida lying between the rivers Perdido and Mis- 
sissippi was recognized as a portion of Louisiana, not 
of Florida, with which it was incorporated only 
after France had ceded Louisiana to Spain, and 
Spain in turn had transferred Florida to England. 
Now, the Louisiana Purchase Treaty had not de- 
fined the bounds of the territory handed over to the 
United States by France — or rather by Napoleon 
— but it had described that territory as "the colony 
or province of Louisiana with the same extent that 
it has now in the hands of Spain, and that it had 
when France possessed it, and such as it should be 
after the treaties subsequently entered into between 
Spain and other States." Obviously, this amazingly 
vague description left ample scope for argument 
with respect to that portion of West Florida which 
had once belonged unquestionably to Louisiana, 
and now seemed to be as unquestionably part of 
Florida; but the United States, instead of endeavor- 
ing to arrive at an understanding with Spain, to 
which England had in 1783 re-transferred Florida, 
took it for granted that Louisiana actually extended 
eastward to the Perdido, and, albeit Spain was then 
in active occupation of the country between the Mis- 



ANDREW JACKSON 55 

sissippi and the Perdido, in 1804 passed the so-called 
Mobile Act organizing that region for customs pur- 
poses and adding it to the Mississippi Territory. 

Already stung to the quick by the high-handed 
manner in which Napoleon had disposed of Louisiana, 
Spain was instant to resent this step. Her Minister 
at Washington, the Marquis Casa d'Yrujo, penned 
a burning letter of remonstrance to Madison,* who 
was then Secretary of State, and in a trice there 
began a bitter controversy which speedily involved 
France as well as Spain and the United States. 
But it is not necessary here to examine the details 
of this dispute or the merits of the question at issue. 
The point is that the immediate effect was to render 
Spain deaf to all overtures looking to a settlement 
on the basis of purchase, and when, some months 
later, Monroe arrived in Madrid eager to add to 
his Louisiana laurels by effecting a similarly satis- 
factory transaction with the Spanish Government, 
he was not long in discovering that he might well 
have spared himself the journey. It must be noted, 
too, that in the United States itself feeling ran high, 
and, as in the days antedating the Louisiana pur- 
chase, there was talk of invasion and conquest. 

*This letter is printed in part in H. B. Fuller's "The Purchase of 
Florida," pp. 122-24. 



56 ROMANCE OF AMERICAN EXPANSION 

Hope was still cherished, nevertheless, by President 
Jefferson and his advisers that money, not war, 
would suffice for the winning of Florida; and to 
that end, though with considerable difficulty. Con- 
gress was persuaded, in the winter of 1805-6, to pass 
a bill appropriating two million dollars for negotia- 
tions with foreign powers, it being understood that 
the appropriation was made with a view to the pur- 
chase of Florida. 

But again diplomacy proved barren of result, this 
time for the twofold reason that Spain was still in 
a state of excessive irritation, and was also confident 
that the European situation had become such as to 
preclude any attempt to oust her from Florida by 
force. Shortly, too, relations between the two 
countries were abruptly and involuntarily interrupted 
by the outbreak of the bloody* revolution that was 
to mark the beginning of the end of Napoleonic 
despotism. In this way the status quo, so far as 
concerned Florida, continued unchanged until 18 10, 
when there began a series of events that brought to 
the United States a lively sense of the necessity of 
taking firmer action than hitherto, and that should 
have aroused Spain to a realization of the wisdom 
of relinquishing Florida while there was still time 
to drive a favorable bargain. 



ANDREW JACKSON 57 

The first of these events was an insurrection in 
West Florida. Taking advantage of the distressful 
condition of Spain, and infected by the revolutionary 
spirit that had already plunged the South American 
provinces into anarchy, a party of turbulent West 
Floridians, mostly fugitives from the justice of other 
lands, banded themselves together to throve off the 
Spanish yoke, and v^ith little difficulty took by 
storm the fort at Baton Rouge. Their next move, 
after declaring a free and independent government, 
was to offer to turn the province over to the United 
States for a substantial consideration. Madison, 
who had now succeeded Jefferson in the Presidency, 
replied to this offer promptly, though not in the w^ay 
the revolutionists had anticipated. Declaring, in a 
proclamation of October 27, 18 10, that there had 
been far too much delay in adjusting the conflicting 
claims of the United States and Spain, he directed 
Governor Claiborne, of Orleans Territory, to take 
immediate possession of all the country from the 
Mississippi to the Perdido, and to govern it as part 
of his owm Territory, with the understanding, how- 
ever, ''that in the hands of the United States it wall 
not cease to be a subject of fair and friendly negotia- 
tion and adjustment." 

For this action Madison w^as bitterly criticised at 



58 ROMANCE OF AMERICAN EXPANSION 

the time, and has been even more bitterly criticised 
since. But, apart from the question of his possible 
usurpation of the legislative power, the course he 
adopted was in reality the only course open to him 
consistent with safeguarding the interests of his 
country. It was evident that Spanish authority in 
West Florida had given place to a lawless and irre- 
sponsible government, which it was impossible to 
recognize, and the continuance of which it was 
equally impossible to endure;* it was also clear 
that Spain was in no position to restore order; and 
it was apparent, again, that warrant for American 
intervention could be found in the still unsettled 
claim, based on the Louisiana Purchase Treaty, 
that all of West Florida between the Mississippi and 
the Perdido was actually American territory. Madi- 
son's policy, in short, was a policy dictated by the 
necessities of self-defense, not by sheer greed for 
land, as is alleged by those who delight in depicting 
the United States' attitude to Spain, with respect to 
Florida, as that of a bandit intent on plunder. 
Similarly with the subsequent temporary occupa- 
tion of Amelia Island, off the Atlantic coast of East 
Florida, though here there is some real ground for 
criticism in the manner in which the occupation 

* On this point, see Fuller's "The Purchase of Florida," pp. 181-86. 



ANDREW JACKSON 59 

was effected. And in the same justifiable principle 
of self-defense will be found the true historical 
explanation of the step taken a year or so later by 
the man to whom, above all others, must be given 
the credit of bringing Spain to reason. 

This was Andrew Jackson, as yet little known 
outside his own State of Tennessee, whither he had 
come from the Carolinas in 1788 as a young man of 
the humblest birth, without money and without 
friends, his sole reliance native wit and native 
courage. Making his home at Nashville, when it 
was still a crude border settlement bounded by 
pathless forests, he had plunged with ardor into the 
task, not only of gaining a livelihood, but of better- 
ing the community in which he had elected to dwell. 
His first occupation, that of district attorney, proved 
his mettle, for in those days a district attorney had 
to take his life in his hands, such was the lawlessness 
rampant in the frontier country. At Indian fight- 
ing, too, he showed himself utterly devoid of fear. 
And if, as was only too apparent, he displayed in 
his conduct with his fellows an acrimony and blunt- 
ness of speech, an over-readiness to take offense, 
and an uncompromising assertiveness, these were 
defects readily condoned in one of such manifest 
honesty, integrity, straightforwardness, and daring. 



6o ROMANCE OF AMERICAN EXPANSION 

Thus it happened that within an incredibly short 
time Jackson had become one of the most popular 
as well as one of the most respected citizens of 
Tennessee, and, almost as a matter of course, gravi- 
tated into politics, serving for a brief space in both 
Houses of Congress. But, finding himself out of 
his element in Washington, and longing for the 
free, open, and ultra-democratic life of the Western 
country, he had speedily resigned, and hastened 
home to preside over the Supreme Court of Tennes- 
see, to gain election as Major-General of the State 
militia, and to engage in business. As judge, as 
soldier, and as business man he had steadily aug- 
mented his reputation until his brother Tennesseans 
fairly came to idolize him. Their ideals, they 
plainly saw, were his ideals, their interests his. 
Like them, he held an abiding faith in the possi- 
bilities and future of the land in which they lived; 
like them, he felt the instinct for growth and expan- 
sion ; and — what is most important in the present 
connection — like them he would brush aside, with 
fiery impatience, all that might hamper expression 
of that instinct. 

Such was the man — imperious, impetuous, 
masterful, and passionate, protagonist par excellence 
of the spirit of the early West — who by virtue of 







(14 tl 



ANDREW JACKSON 6i 

his rank in the Tennessee militia took command, in 
the opening days of 1813, of a formidable force of 
sturdy frontiersmen, "called out for the defense of 
the lower country." Two years earlier, anticipat- 
ing the outbreak of war with England and recogniz- 
ing the possibility of Florida being occupied by the 
enemy for hostile purposes, Congress had authorized 
the President to take temporary possession of any 
part or all of that Spanish province "in the event of 
an attempt to occupy the said territory, or any part 
thereof, by any foreign power." Now that war had 
actually arrived, Madison was determined that the 
contingency of foreign occupation should not arise. 
To this end had Jackson's army been created, an 
army of which Jackson himself wrote enthusiasti- 
cally: "They go at our country's call to do the will 
of the Government. No constitutional scruples 
trouble them. Nay, they will rejoice at the oppor- 
tunity of placing the American eagle on the ramparts 
of Mobile, Pensacola, and Fort St. Augustine."* 
As luck would have it, however, the Congress of 
1 81 3 was of a different temper from the Congress 
of 181 1, and refused to support Madison in the 
projected occupation, the consequence being that 

* Jackson to Secretary Eustis, in James Parton's "The Life of Andrew 
Jackson," vol. II, p. 372. 



62 ROMANCE OF AMERICAN EXPANSION 

Jackson and his men, without having accomplished 
anything, were forced to march home and leave 
the enemy free to utilize Florida at will. 

Out of this freedom flowed momentous results 
to Jackson and to the nation. In the late autumn 
of that same year, instigated by English emissaries 
and armed from an English fleet, the Creek Indians 
took the war-path against the American settlers 
of the extreme South. The length and breadth 
of the border they harried, consummating, on 
August 30, the ghastly Fort Mims massacre, when 
out of five hundred and fifty soldiers and refugees in 
a pioneer stockade four hundred perished. Burn- 
ing for vengeance, Jackson and his Tennesseans 
flew to arms, and now began a war within a war, and 
a war of extermination. All through the winter it 
raged and on until the spring, when, after the fear- 
ful battle of the Horseshoe, the stricken Creeks, all 
but annihilated, were glad to sue for peace. Then 
followed a brief rest for Jackson, but exceedingly 
brief. His splendid campaigning had won him the 
appointment of Major-General in the United States 
army to succeed "Tippecanoe'' Harrison, who had 
resigned, and summer found him in the field again, 
this time in supreme command of the military de- 
partment of the South. 



I 



ANDREW JACKSON 63 

Always chafing under the lost opportunity to raise 
the American flag in Florida, and doubly embittered 
by the knowledge that England had profited thereby, 
almost his first move was to write to the Secretary 
of War for permission to invade the peninsula. No 
reply coming, and news reaching him that an Eng- 
lish force had landed at Pensacola, the capital of 
West Florida, he resolved, with characteristic reck- 
lessness, to delay no longer. But before he could 
make a beginning the English themselves assumed 
the aggressive, sailing from Pensacola to Mobile, 
whence they were soon compelled to sail again in 
less magnificent array. Eager to pursue, Jackson 
awaited only the arrival of reinforcements, and when 
these came, twenty-five hundred strong, from his 
beloved Tennessee, he was up and off. Marching 
across country, with the tempestuous celerity that 
had already begun to attract the attention of the 
entire country, he appeared before Pensacola three 
days after his departure from Mobile, served on 
the Spanish Governor a summary demand for sur- 
render, and followed this up by an assault that 
forced speedy capitulation. In Fort Barrancas, 
near by, he found a small English garrison, but this 
escaped him, pausing in its flight only long enough 
to destroy the fort. Less than a week later he was 



64 ROMANCE OF AMERICAN EXPANSION 

back in Mobile, passing thence by leisurely stages 
to New Orleans and the battle that won him an 
enduring place among the heroes of American 
history. 

What had been theoretically asserted by the Presi- 
dent and by Congress had been translated into action 
by Andrew Jackson. The United States was not 
at war with Spain; Florida was the territory of a 
supposedly friendly power; yet its soil had been 
invaded, its flag trampled in the dust, its people 
attacked. Nor could Spain with justice complain. 
Willingly or unwillingly, she had committed flagrant 
breaches of neutrality. She had permitted English 
troops to garrison her forts, English fleets to rendez- 
vous in her harbors, and English officers to enlist 
within her borders savage allies against England's 
foes. It mattered not that she had been too weak 
to oppose effectively the English occupation; this 
fact alone should have convinced her, as it had 
fully convinced the United States, that the sooner 
she let go of Florida the better. Nevertheless, 
order having been re-established at home, and with 
order a resumption of diplomatic relations with 
America, she added Jackson's operations to the 
category of wrongs inflicted on her, and resumed 
her old course of tortuous and procrastinating 



I 



ANDREW JACKSON 65 

diplomacy. To persuade her of the folly of this 
course required another concrete demonstration of 
the lengths to which the United States was prepared 
to go if self-defense demanded, and again the needed 
lesson was read by Andrew Jackson. 

The end of the war had by no means marked the 
end of English influence in Florida. English offi- 
cers, and especially a Colonel Nicholls, commandant 
of the garrison that Jackson had expelled from 
Fort Barrancas, lingered in the peninsula even after 
peace had been declared, and spent much of their 
time in exciting the Florida Indians, the Seminoles, 
to renewed hostilities against the border settlers. 
Nicholls, in fact, wxnt so far as to conclude an offen- 
sive and defensive alliance between England and 
the Indians, rebuild and equip an old fort on the 
Apalachicola, and demand in the name of the 
Indians a surrender of the lands ceded to the United 
States by the Creeks as the price of peace. After 
his departure for England, in the vain hope of 
securing from his Government official approval of 
these acts, the fort on the Apalachicola was seized 
by a number of fugitive slaves from Georgia and 
converted into a piratical stronghold of the worst 
description. Using it as a base, they ravaged the 
country for miles across the border, destroying the 



66 ROMANCE OF AMERICAN EXPANSION 

property of their former masters, stealing horses 
and cattle, rescuing criminals, and killing all who 
resisted them. No doubt they could find some justi- 
fication for their acts in the principle of retaliation, 
for the Georgians themselves were not models of 
law and order ; but their brigandage and rapine soon 
became unendurable, and at the direction of the 
Secretary of War a message was sent by Jackson to 
the Governor of Pensacola demanding immediate 
action against them. 

With this demand the Governor was either un- 
willing or unable to comply, and at once the wrath- 
ful Jackson resolved to act on his own account. 
^'I have no doubt," he wrote to General Gaines, 
who was then building stockades and blockhouses 
in the adjacent territory ceded by the Creeks, ''that 
this fort has been established by some villains for 
the purpose of murder, rapine, and plunder, and 
that it ought to be blown up regardless of the ground 
it stands on. If you have come to the same conclu- 
sion, destroy it and restore the stolen negroes to 
their rightful owners." * It so happened that 
Gaines had ordered from New Orleans some sup- 
plies that would have to be carried past ''Negro 

* Jackson to Gaines, April i8, 1816, in Fuller's "The Purchase of 
Florida," p. 229. 




Andrew Jacksox 
From a painting by John Vanderlyn in the Council Chamber. City HaU, New York. 



ANDREW JACKSON 67 

Fort/' as it was popularly called; and he now in- 
structed one of his officers, Colonel Clinch, to pro- 
ceed down the Apalachicola with a body of troops 
and level the fort to the ground at the first sign of 
an attack on the transports. Coming down the 
river, Clinch fell in with a party of Seminoles who 
had their own grievances against the negroes, and 
he promptly pressed them into service and hurried 
on to the fort, near which he found the supply expe- 
dition. Excuse for hostilities was ready at hand 
in the fact that a boat's crew, landing for water, 
had lost four men in an attack by the negroes. 
Forthwith Clinch demanded the surrender of the 
fort, and obtaining in reply a defiant blast of can- 
nonading, opened fire from a gunboat convoying 
the transports. 

The first few shots did little damage, but victory 
came with amazing and shocking swiftness. In 
the fort's magazine some seven hundred barrels of 
gunpowder were stored, and a red-hot ball striking 
this caused an explosion that ended ''Negro Fort" 
for all time, and cost the lives of almost all its de- 
fenders. No fewer than two hundred and seventy 
men, women, and children found an instant death, 
while of those still living, after the smoke had cleared 
away, only a pitiful minority endured the torments 



68 ROMANCE OF AMERICAN EXPANSION 

of their wounds. It must be added, also, that at 
least two of the miserable survivors were handed 
over to the Indians to be cruelly tortured so long as 
a spark of life remained in their mutilated bodies — 
an apt illustration of the truth that the inhumianity of 
those barbarous years of border warfare was by no 
means confined to the enemies of the United States. 
This fearful tragedy was but the opening act in 
the second Jacksonian invasion of Florida. Fresh 
grounds for complaint against the Spanish authori- 
ties soon developed in a renewal of hostilities by 
the Seminoles, the climax coming when, in revenge 
for the burning of a native village by American 
troops, the savages ambushed and massacred nearly 
fifty soldiers and settlers en route up the Apalachicola. 
At news of this, the War Department sent orders to 
Jackson to raise a large force, take command in 
person, and spare no efforts to bring about a lasting 
peace. But before these orders reached him, Jack- 
son himself had addressed to Monroe, then Presi- 
dent, a letter seething with indignation. It would 
be well, he declared, to seize the whole of East Florida 
and hold it '^as indemnity for the outrages of Spain 
upon the property of our citizens.'' This he felt 
certain could be done ^'without implicating the 
government." And, in conclusion, he roundly 



ANDREW JACKSON 69 

asserted: ''Let it be signified to me through any 
channel (say Mr. J. Rhea) that the possession of the 
Floridas would be desirable to the United States, 
and in sixty days it will be accomphshed." * What 
reply, if any, was made to this letter will probably 
never be known. According to Monroe, he received 
it during an attack of illness, laid it away, forgot all 
about it, and did not even read it until after the war 
had come to an end. Jackson maintained, to the 
contrary, that the President had actually instructed 
Mr. Rhea (a Congressman from Tennessee) to write 
saying that his plan was approved, and that Rhea's 
reply was received by him before he crossed the 
border.f Whatever the truth, across the border he 
went, in March, 18 18, at the head of an army of 
about three thousand, including a thousand of his 
veteran Tennesseans and rather less than a thousand 
friendly Indians. 
There were to be no half-way measures now. 

* This letter is printed in Jackson's "Exposition" of his conduct in 
Florida, in Thomas Hart Benton's "Thirty Years' View," vol. I, pp. 
167-180. The "Exposition" is one of the most interesting features of 
Benton's work, which contains much of value to the student of Amer- 
ican expansion, especially in connection with the acquisition of Florida, 
Texas, Oregon, and California. 

t Professor Schouler has reviewed the controversy in detail in a paper 
contributed to The Magazine of American History, vol. XII, pp. 308- 
322. His conclusion is that "Monroe never read nor reflected upon 
Jackson's letter at all until after Pensacola had fallen." 



70 ROMANCE OF AMERICAN EXPANSION 

Writing to Captain McKeever, commissioned to 
co-operate with him by sea, Jackson designated 
St. Mark's as the first point of attack, instructed 
McKeever to meet him there, and significantly 
added: '^You will . . . capture and make prisoners 
all, or every person, or description of persons, white, 
red, or black, with all their goods, chattels, and 
effects, together with all crafts, vessels, or means of 
transportation by water. . . . Any of the subjects 
of His Catholic Majesty sailing to St. Mark's may 
be permitted freely to enter the said river. But 
none to pass out, unless after an examination it may 
be made to appear that they have not been attached 
to or in any wise aided and abetted our common 
enemy."* The meaning of this language was plain 
enough. To blockade Spanish ports, to seize 
Spanish property, and to make prisoners of Spanish 
subjects — such was Jackson's program. Inci- 
dentally, he proposed capturing, if possible, certain 
Englishmen at whose door he laid the chief respon- 
sibility for the present Indian rising, and who, he 
had reason to believe, were then at St. Mark's, 
together with two Indian chieftains who had proved 
especially malevolent. 

* Jackson to McKeever, in Parton's "The Life of Andrew Jackson," 
vol. II, p. 448. 



ANDREW JACKSON 71 

To St. Mark's, then, he hastened, as did McKeever, 
the latter scrupHng not to sail into the bay under 
the English flag, and by this disgraceful ruse lure 
aboard the chieftains for whose lives Jackson 
thirsted. Jackson's own course was openness itself. 
Frankly informing the Spanish commandant that 
so long as the struggle with the Indians lasted it 
would be necessary to occupy St. Mark's with 
American troops, he marched his men into the town, 
hauled down the Spanish flag, and raised in its 
stead the Stars and Stripes. No damage was done 
to person or property, and only one prisoner taken 
— a Scotchman, Alexander Arbuthnot, an aged 
Indian trader who was suspected of having intrigued 
against American interests. Next day, without so 
much as the semblance of a trial, McKeever's native 
captives were hanged, a fate which they richly 
deserved; and a start was made at once for the In- 
dian stronghold of Suwanee, far to the east and in 
the midst of swamps accounted impassable. A 
week of arduous marching and the goal was reached, 
too late, however, to surprise the Indians, who had 
taken hurried flight, warned by a note that Arbuth- 
not had despatched to his son, also a trader. The 
town destroyed, back went Jackson to St. Mark's, 
taking with him as prisoner an Englishman, Robert 



72 ROMANCE OF AMERICAN EXPANSION 

Ambrister, a gentleman of family but not of the best 
of reputations, who by mischance wandered into 
the American camp. 

At St. Mark's once more, not a moment was lost 
in placing Arbuthnot and Ambrister on trial for 
their lives. ^'It is all-important," Jackson had 
-i written McKeever, ''that these men should be 
captured and made examples of," and the failure of 
the expedition to Suwanee had not disposed him to 
modify in any way the merciless course mapped out 
in that letter. Arbuthnot stood charged with incit- 
ing the Indians to war against the United States, 
supplying them with munitions of war, and acting 
as a spy; Ambrister was accused of personally 
making war against the United States, and aiding 
the enemies of the United States. There was no 
particularly strong evidence against either, yet the 
court martial that tried them sentenced both to 
death, Arbuthnot to be hangec), Ambrister to be 
shot. In Ambrister 's case the sentence was after- 
wards commuted by the court martial to flogging 
and a year's imprisonment, but Jackson, who 
seemed for the moment to have given way com- 
pletely to the violence of his passions, ordered the 
original sentence to be carried into effect. Thus 
two British subjects perished, on the soil of a friendly 



ANDREW JACKSON 73 

Power, and at the arbitrary command of an armed 
representative of a third Power, with which both 
the others were supposed to be at peace * 

Now word was brought to the still unappeased 
Jackson, that a large number of Indians said to be 
more than five hundred in all, had sought refuge 
at Pensacola, and were receiving asylum there. 
Foaming with rage, he detached from his main 
body a mixed force of regulars and Tennesseans, 
and set off to the West Floridian capital fast as 
his troops could march. Nor did he halt on receipt 
of a letter from the Spanish Governor protesting in 
the name of the King of Spain against his invasion 
of that monarch's territory, and threatening to expel 
him unless he withdrew at once. His only reply 
was to urge his men to greater speed. Arrived at 
Pensacola, whence the Governor fled precipitately 
to Fort Barrancas, he mastered that town as easily 
as he had mastered St. Mark's, ran up the American 
flag, and quickly forced the surrender of Barrancas 
with the Governor and three hundred Spanish troops. 
All Florida now lay at his mercy, prostrate and 
helpless; but, contenting himself with leaving garri- 
sons in the captured forts, he recrossed the border 

* The evidence given at the trial will be found in "American State 
Papers — Foreign Relations," vol. IV, pp. 580-596, 



74 ROMANCE OF AMERICAN EXPANSION 

in a few days with the bulk of his army, confident 
that what he had already accomplished would be 
quite sufficient to bring Spain to terms. 

He was hardly prepared for the storm that at once 
burst about his head. Not only in England, Spain, 
and European countries generally was he denounced 
as a bandit, a murderer, and a high-handed violator 
of the laws of nations, but in his own country he 
found himself the target for unrestrained abuse. It 
mattered not that the public at large applauded his 
actions and sang his praises as a true American who 
would dare and do whenever national interests 
required. The President, the Cabinet, and Con- 
gress, fearful that war with both England and Spain 
was certain to eventuate, debated long and earnestly 
the best way out of what seemed to them an exceed- 
ingly bad business. Throughout the summer Cabi- 
net meetings were held almost daily, and at these 
Jackson's sole defender was the Secretary of State, 
John Quincy Adams. All save Adams were for 
disavowing his conduct in toto and making suitable 
reparation; but Adams, with an inflexibility that 
would have done credit to Jackson himself, insisted 
that the necessities of the case amply justified Jack- 
son's proceedings, and that, in the last analysis, the 
responsibility lay not at his door but at the door of 



ANDREW JACKSON 75 

the Spanish commanding officers in Florida. In 
the end, but only after a prolonged struggle, Adams 
won his point; and the United States made known 
to the world its intention of standing by the fiery 
warrior from Tennessee, whatever the consequences. 
The consequences were the tacit approval by 
England of his execution of Arbuthnot and Am- 
brister, and the cession of Florida by Spain. To 
the latter result Adams again contributed powerfully 
and most of all by a letter he wrote in November, 
181 8, ostensibly addressed to the American Minis- 
ter at Madrid, but in reality being in the nature of 
an ultimatum to the Spanish Government. Seldom 
indeed has an American statesman penned a more 
noteworthy document. Reviewing in the fullest 
detail the long-standing grievances of the United 
States against Spain, the repeated breaches of 
neutrality, the outrages committed by Indians, fugi- 
tive slaves, and outlaws who found sanctuary in 
Spain's dominions, her toleration of the acts of aliens 
like Nicholls, Arbuthnot, and Ambrister, and her 
constant failure to fulfil treaty obligations, Adams 
declared bluntly: ^^ Spain must immediately make 
her election either to place a force in Florida at once 
adequate for the protection of her territory and to the 
fulfilment of her engagements, or cede to the United 



76 ROMANCE OF AMERICAN EXPANSION 

States a province of which she retains nothing but 
the nominal possession, but which is, in fact, a dere- 
lict, open to the occupancy of every enemy, civilized 
or savage, of the United States, and serving no other 
earthly purpose than as a point of annoyance to 
them. . . . The duty of this Government to pro- 
tect the persons and property of our fellow-citizens 
on the borders of the United States is imperative 
— it must be discharged."* There was no mistak- 
ing such language, and there was no denying the 
fact that so long as the United States held men like 
Andrew Jackson, Spain could not hope to keep to 
her old ways with impunity. Alive at last to the 
dangers of the situation, and well aware that it was 
impossible for her to maintain an efficient govern- 
ment in Florida, she announced her willingness to 
negotiate a treaty of cession, which was finally con- 
cluded and signed in Washington, February 22, 
1819; its definite ratification, however, being de- 
layed for various reasons until two years afterwards. 
July 10, 182 1, the United States formally took pos- 
session, having already, fittingly enough, appointed 
as the first Governor of its new Territory the vic- 
torious Andrew Jackson. 

* John Quincy Adams to George W. Erving, in "American State 
Papers — Foreign Relations," vol. IV, p. 544. 



ANDREW JACKSON 77 

It remains to be added that by the terms of the 
treaty the seed was sown for another harvest of 
trouble. In addition to the actual transfer of terri- 
tory, the monetary consideration for which was five 
million dollars to be paid by the United States, not 
to Spain, but to American claimants having bills 
against Spain for damages dating back in some 
instances to the first Napoleonic war, the Florida 
treaty fixed for the first time the boundaries of the 
region acquired by the United States in the Louisiana 
Purchase. Here a distinct concession was made by 
the United States, which began negotiations with 
the claim that in the southwest Louisiana extended 
to the Rio Grande, but ended by accepting the 
Sabine as the boundary line in that direction. Thus, 
to the intense indignation of the Western settlers, 
whatever title the United States had to the fertile 
plains of Texas was specifically relinquished. On 
the other hand, Spain relinquished no less specifically 
her shadowy claim to the so-called Oregon country 
in the northwest — the vast expanse of territory 
bounded by the Rockies, the Pacific, California, and 
Russian North America. Both relinquishments, 
as we shall see, were soon to prove disturbing ele- 
ments in the political life of the American nation. 



CHAPTER IV 

SAM HOUSTON AND THE ANNEXATION OF TEXAS 

Following the acquisition of Florida an entirely 
new period opens in the history of the territorial 
growth of the United States. InevitabiHty is still 
the dominant characteristic of the expansion move- 
ment; but now it is conditioned, and most powerfully, 
by an element that had little or no influence in the 
earlier acquisitions. This was the element of sec- 
tionalism, born of the institution of slavery. Prior 
to the treaty of 1819, by which Florida became a 
part of the United States, the urgent necessity of 
combined action against external dangers had pre- 
vented any clear appreciation of the inherent con- 
flict of interests between the slaveholding and the 
non-slaveholding States. But with the removal of 
outside pressure came prompt recognition of the 
internal issue raised by the presence of slavery; and 
thereafter, from the moment of the so-called Missouri 
Compromise of 1820 to the historic secession forty 

years later, the drift into sectionalism was steadily 

78 

/ 



SAM HOUSTON 79 

accentuated. In the intervening period three terri- 
torial acquisitions of great magnitude were made, 
each of which was intimately connected, though in 
different ways, with the growing determination of 
one section of the country to restrict slavery, and of 
the other to extend it. 

In the case of Texas, the first of these acquisitions, 
sectionalism operated both to promote and to delay 
what is now universally accounted a most desirable 
addition to the Union. The American colonization 
of Texas would have been less rapid had not the 
Missouri Compromise, with its clause forbidding 
the creation of new slave States in the Louisiana 
Purchase territory north of the southern boundary 
of Missouri, forced the slaveholders of the South to 
thoughts of expansion. And, on the other hand, the 
annexation of Texas would have been accomplished 
far sooner had not its championship by the friends 
of slavery aroused the foes of slavery to lively opposi- 
tion. This is not saying that its accomplishment 
must be considered a triumph for sectionalism over 
nationalism. Long before the interjection of the 
slavery issue into the annexation movement, there 
was ample evidence of a national desire for the 
possession of Texas. Repeated attempts were made 
to secure it, first, on the ground that it was really a 



So ROMANCE OF AMERICAN EXPANSION 

part, not of Spanish Mexico, but of French Louisiana, 
and hence that title to it had passed to the United 
States with the Louisiana Purchase; and afterwards, 
this claim being relinquished in the Florida treaty, 
by offers from the Government to purchase it from 
Mexico. 

There can be no doubt, either, that once Mexico 
departed from the traditional Spanish policy of 
hostility to alien colonization and admitted American 
settlers within the confines of Texas, her hold of that 
province was doomed. She had had warning enough 
to avoid this suicidal step. Ever since the Mississippi 
Valley folk, in the closing years of the eighteenth 
century, had learned of the riches and fertility, the 
splendid skies and noble streams, of the prairie 
plains that stretched from the Sabine to the Rio 
Grande, there had come into Texas a succession of 
adventurers spying out the land and striving to 
snatch it from the feeble grasp of Spain. One and 
all of these adventurers, from Philip Nolan in 1800 
to James Long in 1819,^' had failed in their attempts; 
but only because they had taken absurdly inade- 

* A brief but excellent account of these invasions will be found in 
George P. Garrison's "Texas," They are treated in greater detail in 
Henderson Yoakum's "History of Texas from its First Settlement," 
which has been reprinted with helpful notes in Dudley G. Wooten's 
"Comprehensive History of Texas." See also Hubert H. Bancroft's 
"History of the Pacific States of North America," vol. XL 



SAM HOUSTON 8i 

quate means to the end in view. Any really effective 
force would have made short work of the Spanish 
troops scattered through the widely separated pre- 
sidios. Nevertheless, ignorant or heedless of the 
true significance of these filibustering expeditions, 
the Mexicans, so soon as they had themselves mas- 
tered their Spanish rulers and established an inde- 
pendent, if extraordinarily turbulent, republic, threw 
open the gates that had so long been shut and in- 
vited whomsoever would to enter and settle in Texas. 
Credit for bringing about this change in policy 
belongs in chief measure to a Connecticut Yankee, 
Moses Austin, and his son Stephen. It was the 
father who, in the year of the Florida treaty, con- 
ceived the idea of persuading the 4hen moribund 
Spanish Government to grant him a tract of land 
for the establishment of a colony; and "it was the 
son's distinction to obtain from the Mexican Govern- 
ment a confirmation of the Spanish grant and to 
plant the first American settlement in Texas. There 
is nothing to show that either of the Austins or their 
colonists were inspired by the sinister motives some 
would attribute to them. On the contrary, there is 
every reason to believe that they were simply fron- 
tiersmen desirous of bettering their condition and 
persuaded that they would have an excellent chance 



82 ROMANCE OF AMERICAN EXPANSION 

to do this in a land that boasted more than two 
hundred and fifty thousand square miles of verdant 
farming country and a white population of only four 
thousand. Into Texas, therefore, they went, and 
fast on their heels followed others, attracted by a 
succession of liberal colonization laws which ex- 
empted settlers from all taxes and customs duties 
for a long term of years. Thus it resulted that 
within less than a decade after the arrival of Austin's 
first contingent of immigrants the four thousand 
whites had risen to twenty thousand, of whom 
the vast majority were Americans. Unquestionably, 
Mexico might well hope to attain her aim of popu- 
lating and developing her unoccupied territories. 

But it was not so certain that she was pursuing a 
policy entirely to her advantage. In fact, she soon 
began to suspect, though at first dimly, that a mis- 
take had been made in permitting the growth within 
her borders of a community alien from her in blood, 
institutions, and points of view. Complete realiza- 
tion of the danger to which she had exposed herself 
was forced upon her by the obvious eagerness of the 
American Government to add Texas to the already 
colossal dominions of the United States. At the 
time of the execution of the Florida treaty no one, 
except possibly Henry Clay and Thomas Hart 



SAM HOUSTON Ss 

Benton, had been more opposed than John Quincy 
Adams to the concession accepting the Sabine in- 
stead of the Rio Grande as the southwest boundary 
of the Louisiana territory; and with the election of 
Adams to the Presidency an effort was at once begun 
to effect a more favorable readjustment. Scarcely 
had Adams entered into office when instructions were 
sent to Joel R. Poinsett, the American Minister to 
Mexico, to sound the Mexican Government on the 
possibility of its ceding at least part of Texas to the 
United States; and two years later, in 1827, Poinsett 
was directed to make a definite offer of one million 
for all Texas, a proposal which he refused to make, 
knowing that it would meet with instant refusal * 
In another tvv'-o years, however, and under most 
significant circumstances, the subject was officially 
and definitely broached to the Mexican authorities. 
Andrew Jackson was now President, the man 
who had already compelled one territorial surrender 
to the United States. At that time he had differed 



* The authority for this statement is Henry Clay who, writing in 
Niles' National Register, April 17, 1844, stated that Poinsett "forebore 
even to make an overture for that purpose. Upon his return to the 
United States he informed me, at New Orleans, that his reason for not 
making it was that he knew the purchase was wholly impracticable, 
and that he was persuaded that if he made the overture it would have 
no other effect than to aggravate irritations, already existing, upon mat- 
ters of difference between the two countries." 



84 ROMANCE OF AMERICAN EXPANSION 

from Adams and Clay and Benton in the matter of 
the southwest boundary, but since then his views 
had completely changed and he yielded to none in 
the whole-heartedness of his desire to secure Texas. 
It was his profound conviction, summed up in a 
private letter written in after years, that *'the safety 
as well as the perpetuation of our glorious Union 
depends upon the retrocession of the whole of that 
country, as far as the ancient limits of Louisiana, to 
the United States." * In this conviction he acted 
precisely as Adams had done before him, sending to 
the reluctant Poinsett, who was still the unenvied 
representative of the United States in Mexico, in- 
structions to make an offer of purchase, bidding as 
high as five million dollars if necessary. f 

The moment might well have seemed propitious. 
Mexico was threatened by a Spanish expedition, bent 
on reconquest; she was weakened by her incessant 
revolutions; and she was sadly in need of funds. 
Yet, with a promptitude which disconcerted Poinsett, 
though it did not surprise him, she spurned the 
offer, greatly to the wrath of the imperious Jackson, 
but equally to the satisfaction of not a few of Jack- 

* Jackson to W. B. Lewis, in Cyrus T. Brady's "The True Andrew 
Jackson," p. 284. 

t Van Buren to Poinsett, in "House Executive Document No. 42, 
Twenty-fifth Congress, First Session," pp. 10-16. 



SAM HOUSTON 85 

son's fellow-countrymen. For, in the short space of 
time which had elapsed since Adams made his over- 
tures, sectional opposition had begun to crystallize 
with the dawning suspicion that the annexation of 
Texas might weaken, not strengthen, the Union, by 
giving the people of the slave States an opportunity 
to evade the consequences of the Missouri Com- 
promise and obtain political ascendency in the 
councils of the nation. Already the voice of the 
free States could be heard asserting, in the words of 
the "New England Palladium": ''The acquisition 
and settlement of Texas, a country of surprising 
fertility, embracing three hundred thousand square 
miles and capable of supporting a population of 
seven or eight millions, would be highly advan- 
tageous to our trade and manufactures. Those 
advantages would remain to us even in case the 
creation of the acquired territory into States should 
lead to a dissolution of the Union. But as long as 
the integrity of the Union is considered as paramount 
to any consideration of commercial advantage, so 
long will the proposed purchase of Texas be opposed 
by New England." * 

* The New England Palladium, September 22, 1829. See also an 
editorial on the same subject in the issue of September 29. This news- 
paper is very useful for a study of the Texas question during these early 
years, and particularly of Sam Houston's connection with the annexa- 



86 ROMANCE OF AMERICAN EXPANSION 

This was in 1829, the year of Jackson's futile 
offer to buy; and before the year had sped the "Pal- 
ladium" was congratulating its readers that the 
possibility of annexation had become too remote for 
consideration. But exactly at this juncture the 
arrival at Washington of Sam Houston, sometime 
Governor of Tennessee and all-time friend of Andrew 
Jackson, brought upon the scene the one man whom 
destiny was holding in reserve to win Texas for the 
United States. Fresh from the wilds of Arkansas 
he came, in January, 1830, clad in picturesque 
Indian garb, hopeful of enlisting Jackson's influence 
in securing a government contract, and, though 
perhaps less hopefully, eager to set on foot a most 
ambitious project for gaining possession of the 
region Mexico had bluntly refused to sell. "I 

tion movement in its initial stages. The files of the Palladium for 1829 
and 1830 show that there was a wide-spread impression that Houston 
was even then actively filibustering to win Texas for the United States. 
Thus, in the issue of October 20, 1829, we read — " The Political Grid- 
iron^ a Louisiana paper, wishes to embroil the Texas. The United 
States, it says, should take possession of Texas without delay, and if 
General Houston has gone to that country, as is asserted, for the pur- 
pose of revolutionizing it, we may expect to hear shortly of his raising 
his flag." In the issue of November 17, 1829, the Palladium reports 
that "the I^egislature of Arkansas is in session. Governor Pope hopes 
and expects the purchase of the Texas. He says nothing will be 
wanting, on the part of the President, to add to the strength, security, 
and prosperity of the western country." It may not be amiss to add 
that Pope was an appointee of Jackson's, having been named Governor 
of Arkansas March 9, 1829, or only five days after Jackson's inaugura- 
tion as President. 



SAM HOUSTON 87 

learned from him/' recorded Dr. Robert Mayo, 
with whom Houston Hved at the celebrated ''Brown's 
Hotel" in Washington, ''that he was organizing an 
expedition against Texas ; to afford a cloak to which 
he had assumed the Indian costume, habits, and 
associations, by settling among them in the neighbor- 
hood of Texas. That nothing was more easy to 
accomplish than the conquest and possession of that 
extensive and fertile country, by the co-operation of 
the Indians in the Arkansas Territory, and recruits 
among the citizens of the United States. And that 
in his view it would hardly be necessary to strike a 
blow to wrest Texas from Mexico." * 

Now, while Mayo is not altogether a credible 
witness, and while there is cause for suspecting that 
in the detailed account of the "conspiracy" which 
he hastened to lay before President Jackson he 
drew somewhat on the resources of an exuberant 
imagination, there is no doubting, in the light of 
subsequent events, that he told the truth so far as 
concerned Houston's personal intentions, and that 
Jackson himself was cognizant of, and secretly con- 
nived at, his old friend's schemes against the peace 
of Mexico. In Jackson's case, we must believe, the 

* Robert Mayo, in Parton's "Life of Andrew Jackson," vol. Ill, 
p. 654. 



88 ROMANCE OF AMERICAN EXPANSION 

motive was purely patriotic. In Houston's, how- 
ever, another consideration entered — the desire for 
self -vindication. His had been a strangely romantic 
and pathetic career. He was born, in 1793, of 
humble parentage, like Jackson himself; his birth- 
place being a farmhouse in an outlying Virginia 
settlement. On both his father's and his mother's 
side he was of the so-called Scotch-Irish stock — 
tracing his ancestry, that is to say, to Scotland via 
Ireland — and thus he inherited a double share of 
the Scotch-Irish compound of assertiveness, pug- 
nacity, obstinacy, independence, endurance, and 
reckless daring. For the better part of his boyhood 
he led a life of restless roaming that might have 
made of him a second Boone; but his father's death, 
and the removal of his mother to a new home in the 
heart of the Tennessee wilderness, brought him a 
greatly needed corrective in the way of hard work. 
At infrequent intervals he attended school, and one 
day, the story goes, there fell into his hands a copy 
of Pope's ''IHad," which so fired his youthful imag- 
ination that when the attempt was made to appren- 
tice him to a trade he ran away and took refuge with 
some friendly Cherokees, whose chieftain adopted 
him. Here he remained, with only occasional visits 
to his mother, until the outbreak of the War of 181 2; 




Sam Houston 
From a portrait painted by F. B. Carpenter in 1855, and now owned by Mr. Clarence W 

Bowen, New York. 



SAM HOUSTON 89 

and then, chancing to meet a recruiting sergeant, he 
gladly donned a United States army uniform, and 
went in quest of adventures and glory. 

Both he found speedily, his most notable achieve- 
ment being at the battle of Horseshoe Bend, where 
Jackson crushed forever the power of the Creeks 
and took a fearful vengeance for the massacre at 
Fort Mims. Sorely wounded, and ordered by Jack- 
son himself to withdraw to the rear, young Houston, 
determined to win fame or death, deliberately dis- 
obeyed the order, fighting until he fell with two 
bullets in him. C. Edwards Lester, his best known 
biographer, who wrote under Houston's personal 
supervision, has drawn a graphic picture of the part 
he played in this famous battle. The regiment to 
which he was attached had been ordered to storm 
the breastworks erected by the Creeks. Houston, 
by this time an ensign, plunged forward with his 
company. ''While he was scaling the works, or 
soon after he reached the ground, a barbed arrow 
struck deep into his thigh. He kept his ground for 
a moment till his lieutenant and men were by his 
side, and the warriors had begun to recoil under their 
desperate onset. He then called to his lieutenant 
to extract the arrow, after he had tried in vain to do 
it himself. The officer made two unsuccessful 



90 ROMANCE OF AMERICAN EXPANSION 

attempts and failed. ^Try again,' said Houston, 
the sword with which he was still keeping the com- 
mand raised over his head, 'and if you fail this time 
I will smite you to the earth.' With a desperate 
effort he drew forth the arrow, tearing the flesh as it 
came. A stream of blood rushed from the place, 
and Houston crossed the breastworks to have his 
wound dressed. 

''The surgeon bound it up and stanched the 
blood, and General Jackson, who came up to see 
who had been wounded, recognizing his young 
ensign, ordered him firmly not to return. Under 
any other circumstances Houston would have obeyed 
any order from the brave man who stood over him, 
but now he begged the general to allow him to return 
to his men. General Jackson ordered him most 
peremptorily not to cross the breastworks again. 
But Houston was determined to die in that battle 
or win the fame of a hero. . . . Rushing once more 
to the breastworks, he was in a few seconds at the 
head of his men. 

"The action had now become general, and more 
than two thousand men were struggling hand to 
hand. Arrows and spears and balls wxre flying, 
swords and tomahawks were gleaming in the sun, 
and the whole peninsula rang with the yell of the 



SAM HOUSTON 91 

savage and the groans of the dying. . . . Not a 
warrior offered to surrender, even while the sword 
was at his breast. Hundreds had already fallen, 
and were weltering in their gore — multitudes of 
others had been shot or drowned in attempting to 
swim the river. . . . But the victory was still incom- 
plete — the work of slaughter was not yet done. A 
large party of Indians had secreted themselves in a 
part of the breastworks, constructed over a ravine 
in the form of the roof of a house, with narrow port- 
holes from which a murderous fire could be kept up 
whenever the assailants should show themselves. 
Here the last remnant of the Creek warriors of the 
peninsula were gathered, and as the artillery could 
not be brought to bear upon the place, they could 
be dislodged only by a bold charge, which would 
probably cost the life of the brave men who made it. 
''An offer of life if they would surrender had been 
rejected with scorn by these brave, desperate sav- 
ages, which sealed their fate. General Jackson now 
called for a body of men to make the charge. As 
there was no order given, the line stood still, and not 
an officer volunteered to lead the forlorn hope. 
Supposing some captain would lead forward his 
company, Houston would wait no longer. Calling 
on his platoon to follow him, he dashed down the 



92 ROMANCE OF AMERICAN EXPANSION 

precipitous descent towards the covered ravine. 
But his men hesitated. With a desperation which 
belongs only to such occasions, he seized a musket 
from one of his men, and, leading the way, ordered 
the rest to follow him. There was but one way of 
attack that could prevail — it was to charge through 
the port-holes, although they were bristling with 
rifles and arrows, and it had to be done by a rapid, 
simultaneous plunge. As he was stopping to rally 
his men, and had leveled his musket, within five 
yards of the port-holes, he received two rifle-balls in 
his right shoulder, and his arm fell shattered to his 
side. Totally disabled, he turned and called once 
more to his men, and implored them to make the 
charge. But they could not advance. Houston 
stood in his blood till he saw it would do no good to 
stand any longer, and then went beyond the range 
of the bullets, and sank down exhausted to the 
earth." * 

For months his recovery was uncertain, but when 
he was able to be up and about he quickly discovered 
in Jackson, who had readily forgiven his disobe- 
dience but had not forgotten his heroism, a friend 
eager to assist in the advancement of his interests. 

* C. Edwards Lester's "Sam Houston and His Republic." Edition 
of 1846, pp. 20-22, 



SAM HOUSTON 



93 



Resigning from the army and embracing the prac- 
tise of law, with the powerful influence of Jackson 
constantly behind him, he gained immediate recog- 
nition as one of the coming men of Tennessee. He 
had been barely twenty-one years old, an utterly 
unknown frontier lad, at the battle of the Horseshoe ; 
before he reached the age of thirty-one he was elected 
Major- General of the State militia and member of 
the National House of Representatives; and he was 
not yet thirty-five when a tidal wave of popular 
enthusiasm carried him into the Governorship of 
Tennessee, even against the candidacy of the famous 
war Governor, William Blount. 

But now, on the very eve, as it seemed, of still 
greater honors, the entire current of his life was 
changed by a domestic affliction. Deserted by his 
wife, accused by the tongue of scandal, and hounded 
by enemies, he took the amazing step of resigning 
from office, abandoning civilization, and seeking an 
asylum among the Cherokees to whom he had fled 
in boyhood. There, for a time, heedless of the out- 
side world, he gave himself over to hunting and to 
drowning his sorrows in libations that quickly 
earned for him among his tawny companions the 
nickname of '^Drunken Sam." But this lasted for 
only a time. Ere the year was out he was on his 



94 ROMANCE OF AMERICAN EXPANSION 

way to Washington, to visit the friend who had 
never failed him, and to find if possible a means of 
proving to friend and foe alike that the career which 
had promised so well was not completely blasted. 

It was nearly three years later, however, before 
Houston actually set foot on the soil of Texas; the 
delay being due, in part at any rate, to his persistence 
in seeking the contract which, despite all of Jack- 
son's influence, was steadily denied him. In the 
meantime, while he was alternating between Wash- 
ington and his wigwam home in Arkansas, the 
shadow of his former self, without reputation, without 
means, and without friends other than the few who, 
like Jackson, saw in him only the hero of Horseshoe 
Bend, the situation in Texas was steadily growing 
more favorable to his undertaking. Jackson's offer 
had thoroughly aroused the Mexicans to the necessity 
of checking the inflow of American colonization, and 
with unwonted unanimity they resolved on action to 
vindicate and maintain their authority in their 
northern province. Their first move was the issu- 
ance of a decree abolishing slavery in Mexico. 
Though couched in general terms, the decree prac- 
tically affected Texas alone, and was intended to 
discourage further immigration from the Southern 
States, whence most of the colonists had come. It 



SAM HOUSTON 95 

was soon, however, rescinded to all intents and 
purposes;* but following it, early in 1830, the 
Mexican Congress enacted a sweeping law pro- 
viding for the establishment of Mexican colonies, 
military posts, and customs offices in the border 
provinces; prohibiting further colonization by immi- 
grants from adjacent countries; and forbidding the 
importation of slaves. It has been well said that 
from the passage of this law can be traced the growth 
of discontent in Texas. It was aimed only at the 
Texans, or rather at the now dreaded Americaniza- 
tion of Texas, and no time was lost in giving it effect. 
Troops were hurried to the American settlements, 
guards stationed along the frontier to keep out 
slaves and turn back prospective immigrants, cus- 
toms collections were begun, and all but two of the 
Texas ports were closed. 

To the Texans, hitherto in the enjoyment of a 
degree of liberty amounting almost to license, these 
measures were galling in the extreme, and a spirit 
of uneasiness and resentment rapidly took posses- 
sion of them. But, with admirable restraint, they 
held themselves well in hand until some of their 
leading men were imprisoned on trivial charges. 
Then, pretending that they wished to aid Santa 

♦See Garrison's "Texas," pp. 172-73. 



96 ROMANCE OF AMERICAN EXPANSION 

Anna, the leader of the latest Mexican revolution, 
they rose in arms and attacked the recently estab- 
lished garrisons, disbanding only after the last 
Mexican soldier had fled across the border. It was 
at this moment, when all was confusion, uncertainty, 
and indignation, that Houston arrived in Texas. 
The purpose of his coming seems to have been well 
understood, for at the frontier town of Nacogdoches 
he received a warm welcome and an urgent invita- 
tion to settle there. He learned that a convention 
was soon to meet for a discussion of the situation, 
and further information prompted him to despatch 
to Jackson an enthusiastic letter declaring that then, 
if ever, was the time to acquire Texas, and that 
nineteen twentieths of the population of the province 
were eager for annexation to the United States.* In 
this he greatly erred, for, as a matter of fact, the 
Texans as yet had no intention of making a definite, 
clear-cut stand for separation from Mexico. That 

* Houston added — "Now is a very important crisis for Texas. As 
relates to her future prosperity and safety, as well as the relations which 
it [sic] is to bear to the United States, it is now in the most favorable 
attitude, perhaps, that it can be to obtain it on fair terms. England is 
pressing her suit for it, but its citizens will resist if any transfer should 
be made of them to any Power but the United States. I have traveled 
nearly five hundred miles across Texas, and am now enabled to judge 
pretty correctly of the soil and resources of the country, and I have no 
hesitancy in pronouncing it the finest country, for its extent, upon the 
globe. ... It is probable that I may make Texas my abiding place. 



SAM HOUSTON 97 

they would ultimately do so was beyond question, 
in view of the irreconcilable contradiction between 
the instinctive love of freedom which was part of 
their Anglo-Saxon heritage and the innate despotism 
of their Mexican rulers. But their immediate desire 
w^as to effect a restoration of the conditions existing 
prior to the enforcement of the Act of 1830. 

Meeting in convention in April, 1833, they drew 
up a petition for the repeal of its most obnoxious 
clauses and for permission to adopt a State consti- 
tution, w^hich, it is significant to note, was drafted 
by a committee headed by Houston, and was thor- 
oughly republican in form and spirit. Then ensued 
an anxious period. For six months their commis- 
sioner — none other than the ^'Father of Texas" 
himself, Stephen F. Austin — labored in vain to 
obtain a hearing; after which, when about to leave 
Mexico City with his mission unfulfilled, he was 
thrown into prison, where he lingered many weary 
months. This treatment, of course, enraged the 
Texans, and the revolutionary spirit steadily grew 
apace under the zealous fostering of Houston and 
minor agitators who were determined to force a 
separation. None the less, the evidence goes to 

In adopting this course 7 will never forget the country of my birth." 
This letter, dated from Natchitoches, February 17, 1833, is printed in 
whole in Henry G. Bruce's "The Life of General Houston," pp. 81-83. 



98 ROMANCE OF AMERICAN EXPANSION 

show that the "peace party," of which Austin was 
the most influential member, remained in the ascend- 
ant until as late as August, 1835. Then a crisis 
was precipitated by the news that the Mexican 
Government — now concentrated in the single per- 
son of Santa Anna — was planning to send a large 
army into Texas to break up the foreign settlements. 
With this the issue was squarely presented — war, 
or unconditional surrender — and from that time 
forward even the peace-loving Austin united his 
voice with Houston's in exhorting the Texans to 
resist to the death. 

The story of the war that followed need not be 
told in detail. Despite the assistance received from 
the United States, in flagrant violation of the laws 
of neutrality, but in perfect accord with the laws of 
racial solidarity and blood relationship, it opened 
inauspiciously for the revolutionary cause. Fast on 
the heels of the ghastly Alamo massacre, when 
Travis, Bowie, Crockett, and their gallant comrades 
were butchered in cold blood by Santa Anna, came 
the similar horror at Goliad, with its death-roll of 
nearly four hundred. These merciless and unfor- 
givable acts were doubtless designed to strike terror 
to the hearts of the revolutionists; but they only 
inspired a blind, unreasoning fury, and an unshak- 




Stephen Austix 

"The Father of Texas" 

From a portrait in the possession of the Texas Historical Society. 



SAM HOUSTON 99 

able resolution to exact a bloody recompense. Such 
was the wrath of the Texans that they even turned 
against Houston, their military head, who, with a 
masterly generalship which they could not appre- 
ciate, w^as employing Fabian tactics to avoid a battle 
until reinforcements should reach him. Not the 
least of his triumphs was the success with which, 
heedless of taunts and protests, he beat down all 
opposition and compelled his rebellious followers to 
do his bidding. In the end the necessity of giving 
battle came sooner than he desired, but with it came 
also the vindication for which he had long been 
toiling, and the independence of Texas. April 21, 
1836, near the San Jacinto River, was fought the 
decisive engagement of the war, when Houston and 
some eight hundred Texans overwhelmingly defeated 
twice their number of Mexicans and captured Santa 
Anna himself. 

In gratitude for that victory, Houston — no longer 
the despised ''Drunken Sam," but universally ac- 
claimed, and deservedly, as a man of transcendent 
abilities — w^as elected President of the Republic, 
which his valor, no less than his intriguing, had con- 
tributed to bring into existence. And now, having 
at the time of his election declared almost unani- 
mously in favor of annexation with the United States, 



loo ROMANCE OF AMERICAN EXPANSION 

the Texans confidently looked forward to an early 
admission into the greater republic of their native 
land. But in this they were doomed to bitter dis- 
appointment. The changed attitude of an influen- 
tial section of the American people — indicated so 
long before as 1829 in the opposition aroused by 
Jackson's attempt to purchase Texas — had by this 
time solidified into a wide-spread and resolute hos- 
tility to the annexation movement. It was recognized 
that, if admitted at all, Texas would have to be 
admitted as a slave State, or States — rumor had it 
that she was to be carved into five or six States in 
the political interests of the slaveholding South — 
for she lay in the slave belt and had by constitutional 
provision established slavery as one of her institu- 
tions; and the increasingly numerous opponents of 
the slavery system had no intention of permitting it 
to intrench itself more firmly than ever in the United 
States. Moreover, there were many, like Adams 
and Benton, who, though expansionists of the first 
order, regarded the proposed measure as a spoliation 
of Mexico, and were accordingly opposed to it. So 
complicated was the situation, and so manifest had 
the drift into sectionalism become, that even the 
Texas-desiring Jackson shrank from a step which 
would certainly disrupt party lines and might 



SAM HOUSTON loi 

endanger the Union for whose ^^ safety and per- 
petuation/' paradoxically enough, he deemed the 
possession of Texas essential. As a result, the Texan 
commissioners, who, soon after the battle of San 
Jacinto, hurried to Washington to proffer annexa- 
tion, met with a decided rebuff, as did the Texan 
Minister on renewing the offer in the following year, 
after the Government of the United States had recog- 
nized the independence of his country. 

Time passed. Jackson's term of office expired; 
his nominee, the adroit Van Buren, reaped the sad 
harvest of a panic year and gave way to the ill-fated 
Harrison; and still the annexation of Texas seemed 
as far off as ever. It was, however, steadily becom- 
ing a livelier subject of public discussion. Several 
State legislatures adopted resolutions declaring for 
or against it, according as the State was slaveholding 
or non-slaveholding; and attempts were made to 
secure action by Congress, a vote on one occasion 
being prevented only by the filibustering of Adams, 
who occupied three weeks in the delivery of a single 
speech. This was in 1838, and it was not until 
1843 that the friends of annexation really had reason 
to hope for success. Then the outlook perceptibly 
brightened, in part owing to the political ambitions 
of President Tyler, but still more as a result of the 



102 ROMANCE OF AMERICAN EXPANSION 

artful diplomacy of President Houston, who had 
already proved himself as capable in statecraft as in 
military leadership. 

In December, 1841, after his election for a second 
term, he had again sounded the authorities at Wash- 
ington with regard to the prospects for annexation, 
and upon receiving an unfavorable reply he adopted 
a well-assumed attitude of indifference and began 
to cultivate close relations with foreign Powers, 
notably Great Britain. Presently most disquieting 
reports reached the United States. It was said, 
among much else, that the British Government pur- 
posed using its influence in Texas to bring about 
the gradual abolition of slavery in all America, 
and thus protect the sugar and cotton industries 
of the East and West Indies from the competition of 
the United States. Improbable though it was, this 
story received wide credence, and action by the 
already willing Tyler, anxious at any cost to curry 
favor with the Democratic party, was hastened by 
the receipt of a notification from Houston that ''the 
subject of annexation is no longer open to discus- 
sion." Promptly, but with great secrecy, negotia- 
tions were begun between the tw^o Governments, 
and before long, to Houston's infinite satisfaction, 
a treaty of annexation was successfully formulated, 



SAM HOUSTON 103 

notwithstanding the angry protests of Mexico, which 
still cherished the vain hope of reconquering Texas. 
But formulation w^as one thing, ratification 
another. Brought to a vote in the United States 
Senate, June 8, 1844, after annexation had been 
elevated to the dignity of a party issue, the treaty 
was decisively rejected by a vote of sixteen in favor 
of, and thirty-five opposed to, ratification. Never- 
theless, Houston did not despair. The American 
people had yet to register their verdict, for one result 
of his diplomacy and of the "British intervention" 
stories had been to place the question of annexation 
among the vital questions of the rapidly approaching 
Presidential election, and he was confident that 
dread of foreign influence, coupled with the instinct- 
ive desire for expansion, would outweigh all other 
considerations in the minds of the majority. Here 
he was right, the comparatively unknown James K. 
Polk, on a platform declaring unreservedly for an- 
nexation, defeating the popular idol, Henry Clay. 
For Houston, as for Jackson watching the contest 
from his well-earned retirement in Tennessee, Polk's 
election was a personal triumph, a personal vindica- 
tion, setting the seal of popular approval on the 
labors and policies of nearly two decades gone. 
Only a few months more and, though not by treaty 



I04 ROMANCE OF AMERICAN EXPANSION 

but by the novel method of a joint resolution of 
Congress, the Lone Star Republic was transformed 
into the American State of Texas. 

This, properly speaking, is the point at which to 
bring our narrative to a close. Of the war with 
Mexico that followed we shall hear enough in the 
course of our study of the conquest of California. 
But it is impossible to resist the temptation to recall, 
however briefly, the splendid sequel to Houston's 
career as an expansionist. The eve of the Civil 
War found him Governor of Texas, after long and 
faithful service in the United States Senate; and 
found him, for well-nigh the first time, out of sym- 
pathy with the desires of his fellow-Texans. They 
were for secession — he was for the Union. Old 
in years, but fiery as ever, with the boldness, the 
bluntness, the patriotism, that had always marked 
his ways, he set himself manfully to conquer the 
popular will and hold Texas true to the cause which 
he deemed the greatest and best in the world. Fail- 
ing, and with horror and anguish hearing his State 
declare in favor of the Confederacy, he made ready 
for a final struggle. He was Governor and he 
would stay Governor, owning allegiance to Texas 
but also to the Union. In vain his friends urged 
him either to swear fealty to the Confederacy or 





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SAM HOUSTON 105 

resign. He would do neither. And thus it came 
about that, after all his labors for Texas, he was 
deposed and expelled from office. Whereupon, in the 
words of one who knew him well, ''he retired to 
his prairie home, and, planting upon his log cabin 
a single four-pounder, he told his State 'to go to 
ruin if she pleased, but she should not drag him 
along with her.' He had made and saved her, and 
if she would be unmade, it should be her work — 
not his." The pity that the weary giant did not live 
to learn that Texas had not been unmade! He died 
July 26, 1863, three weeks after Grant had captured 
Vicksburg. 



CHAPTER V 

THOMAS HART BENTON AND THE OCCUPATION OF 
OREGON 

The annexation of Texas by joint resolution of 
Congress was formally completed on the first day 
of March, 1845. Out of the hostilities with Mexico 
that followed, the United States gained another 
large territorial increase, at one bound crossing the 
Rocky Mountains and spanning the enormous area 
between the Rockies and the Pacific. But the 
Mexican War did not give the United States her first 
foothold on the Pacific. That came with the estab- 
lishment of the American title to Oregon in 1846, 
and was secured, not by a bloody conquest, but by 
the peaceful methods of diplomacy. 

For a time, indeed, the settlement of the so-called 

Oregon Question — carrying with it ownership of 

the immense tract of territory stretching along the 

Pacific from California to Alaska, then Russian 

America — seemed impossible without resort to 

arms. Yet, singularly enough, until that time the 

great danger was that the United States would, 

106 



THOMAS HART BENTON 107 

through sheer negligence, lose what undoubtedly 
belonged to her. The problem was very different 
from that presented by Louisiana, Florida, Texas, 
and the later acquisitions still to be discussed. It 
was not a case of obtaining territory by purchase or 
force of arms, but one of vindicating title to a region 
also claimed by another nation. Originally, in fact, 
and before the United States became a party to 
the dispute, no fewer than four Powers were rival 
claimants to the Oregon country — Spain, France, 
Russia, and Great Britain. Of these the first and 
last alone had any substantial foundation for their 
claims, and this as regarc^ed only isolated sections 
of the territory; but until 1790, when there was forced 
upon her the humiliating Nootka Sound convention 
conceding equal rights to Great Britain, Spain 
asserted sovereignty over the whole of Oregon. 
Two years later, with Robert Gray's discovery of the 
Columbia River and valley, the United States be- 
came an added claimant, strengthening her case in 
1803 by the Louisiana Purchase Treaty, whereby 
she secured whatever rights France had, or fancied 
she had, in the country beyond the mountains; in 
1805 by the explorations of the Lewis and Clark 
expedition; in 181 1 by the founding of the trading- 
post of Astoria at the mouth of the Oregon; and in 



io8 ROMANCE OF AMERICAN EXPANSION 

1819 by the Florida Treaty, a clause of which, as 
was pointed out in a preceding chapter, transferred 
Spain's Oregon claims to the United States. 

Nothing in all this gave the United States a right 
to claim the entire Oregon country — Spain's pre- 
tensions having really been blotted out long before 
the Florida Treaty by her abandonment of the 
region after the Nootka Sound convention of 1790 
— but what it did give was a better title than any 
other nation could show to that part of Oregon 
comprising the rich valley of the Columbia and lying 
between the forty second and forty-ninth parallels 
of latitude. This it was that the United States all 
but lost by reason of the indifference of the Ameri- 
can Government and people. That both Govern- 
ment and people should have been indifferent is, 
however, not at all surprising. Oregon was a re- 
mote, inaccessible, unknown country, popularly 
supposed to be shut off from the United States by 
a vast plain of sun-parched desert and an impassable 
mountain barrier. So little was known of its re- 
sources and possibilities that it was accounted 
absolutely worthless for agriculture, and of value 
only for the fur trade.* In the minds of many 

* The accuracy of this statement has been challenged by T. C. Elli- 
ott of Walla Walla, Washington, writing in Tht Outlook, vol, LXXXIX, 



THOMAS HART BENTON 109 

there was the suspicion, too, that the occupation 
and development of Oregon would work against the 
best interests of the Union, leading to a separation 
between the Americans on the east and the Ameri- 
cans on the west of the mountains. And, as the 
diplomatic struggle n eared its close, an insidious 
and powerful opposition developed from the slave- 
holding Southern States, whose leaders feared that 
the provisions of the Missouri Compromise would 
be applied to Oregon, and additional free States be 
created from it. 

Another and perhaps the greatest reason for the 
apathy which so long prevailed was the fact that 
the people did not feel any immediate need for 
Oregon. The economic pressure which had com- 
pelled the first transmontane migration had not as 
yet made the second inevitable. On the contrary, 

p. 869. But there is ample evidence to show that even the best informed 
Americans of the day knew remarkably little about Oregon. As late 
as 1845, to give a striking piece of testimony, we find the historian Ban- 
croft, then about to take office as Secretary of the Navy, writing — 
"After dinner I left a card on J. C. Calhoun, and with Gilpin spent an 
hour with Benton and his most interesting son-in-law, Lieutenant Fre- 
mont. To hear him talk of the Oregon country seemed like being car- 
ried among snow-capped mountains of Switzerland; and his account 
of the valleys, and beautiful runs of water were almost enough to make 
you think that the garden of Eden was the other side of the mountains. 
I had no idea that there were so many ranges of mountains or so beauti- 
fully picturesque and inviting a region." In M. A. DeWolfe Howe's 
"The Life and Letters of George Bancroft," vol. I, pp. 259-60. 



no ROMANCE OF AMERICAN EXPANSION 

the natural tendency of the time was to spread out 
and occupy the fertile tract about the Mississippi 
and its affluents made available by the Louisiana 
Purchase; and as a consequence, instead of pro- 
gressing steadily westward, the current of migra- 
tion took a northerly and southerly direction 
during the two decades intervening between the 
acquisition of Florida and the annexation of Texas, 
the occupation of Oregon, and the conquest of Cali- 
fornia. The westward tendency was further checked 
for the time being by the Congressional legislation 
removing the northern and southern Indians across 
the Mississippi, and thus throwing open to white 
settlement the lands formerly reserved for the 
*' wards of the Nation." So late as 1840, or but six 
years before the United States definitely took posses- 
sion of Oregon, the frontier line had been advanced 
only to the western boundary of Louisiana, Arkan- 
sas, Missouri, and Illinois, with a narrow belt of 
population extending into eastern Iowa and southern 
Wisconsin. With the enormous area beyond still 
open to settlement and exploitation, there was no 
compulsion to brave the dangers of the desert and 
the mountains for the sake of a home in an unknown 
and, as was generally believed, unfruitful land. 
The situation, in short, was such that had it not been 



THOMAS HART BENTON iii 

for the enthusiasm and persistency of a little group 
of agitators, expansionists of the true stamp, the 
whole of Oregon, from the Mexican to the Russian 
line, must unfailingly have become the prize of 
Great Britain. 

The foremost of these agitators were John Floyd, 
Lewis F. Linn, and Thomas H. Benton, primacy 
among whom must unquestionably be given to 
Benton. Not only was he the first American states- 
man to perceive the danger of losing Oregon alto- 
gether, but to him belongs the greatest measure of 
the credit attaching to all who co-operated to bring 
the contest over Oregon to an honorable and peace- 
ful issue. His voice, also, was the first raised in 
protest against the agreement by which, in 1818, 
the Governments of Great Britain and the United 
States, w^ho with Russia were then the sole remain- 
ing disputants, agreed that Oregon should for the 
period of ten years be thrown open to settlement by 
both British subjects and American citizens. The 
convention of 181 8, Benton angrily declared in 
newspaper articles written before he had entered 
into public life, "speaks as if there was a mutuality 
of countries on the northwest coast to which the 
article [providing for the joint occupation] w^as 
applicable, and a mutuality of benefits to accrue to 



112 ROMANCE OF AMERICAN EXPANSION 

the citizens of both governments by each occupying 
the country claimed by the other. Not so the fact. 
There is but one country in question, and that is 
our own — and of this the British are to have equal 
possession with ourselves, and we no possession 
of theirs. The Columbia is ours; Frazer's River is 
a British possession to which no American ever went 
or ever will go. . . . There is no mutuality in any- 
thing. We furnish the whole stake — country, 
river, harbor; and shall not even maintain the joint 
use of our own. We shall be driven out of it, and 
the British remain sole possessors."* 

This outburst, repeated at frequent intervals 
during the many years the joint occupation lasted, 
was characteristic of the man. Dignified, ponder- 
ous, and pedantic, in outward semblance most unlike 
his fellow- Westerners, Benton was at heart a true 
Westerner, and never more so than in the ardor with 
which he dreamed of new fields for the American 
pioneer to conquer, new territorial acquisitions for 
the American nation to make. He was also one of 
the greatest statesmen the West, or for that matter 
the entire country, has ever produced. His worth 
has been obscured to posterity, as it was to his own 
generation, in part by his personal traits and in part 

* Benton's "Thirty Years' View," vol. I, pp. 109-10. 



THOMAS HART BENTON 113 

by the superior renown of his leader, Jackson, and 
his illustrious contemporaries, the triumvirate Clay, 
Webster, and Calhoun, but it would none the less 
be difficult to name an individual statesman who 
has labored more wisely and effectively for the 
future progress and prosperity of the United States. 
Extravagant some of his dreams may have been, 
and extravagant they certainly seemed to many of 
those who heard him propound them. Yet beneath 
even his most fanciful schemes was the solid sub- 
stratum of hard common sense that made him the 
tireless champion of such vitally essential measures 
as the establishment of a sound monetary standard, 
the improvement of transportation facilities, and the 
development of the unoccupied territories of the 
Union. 

He came logically by his expansionistic senti- 
ments. Born in North CaroHna in 1782, and, like 
Houston of Texas fame, migrating at an early age 
to Tennessee, the War of 181 2 saw him in service 
first as one of Jackson's volunteers, and afterwards 
on the Canadian frontier. As luck would have it, 
he was given little opportunity to learn the art of 
warfare. But the tasks allotted to him afforded a 
comprehensive view of the extent and possibilities 
of the land of his birth, and in this way he became 



114 ROMANCE OF AMERICAN EXPANSION 

inspired with the ambition to play a part in develop- 
ing its resources and advancing it to headship 
among the nations of the world. His removal 
across the Mississippi and into Missouri, where he 
settled at St. Louis in 1815 and soon afterwards 
began to practise law, served to intensify this am- 
bition. 

He found himself in a veritable atmosphere of 
expansion. Trappers and hunters from all sections 
of the new West made their headquarters at St. 
Louis, then little more than a village, but a center 
from which all roads to the wilderness seemed to 
radiate; there was a constant coming and going of 
traders, each with his tale of marvels and riches in 
the distant parts where the sun was lost to view; 
the caravan of hopeful emigrants was a familiar 
sight. Giving full rein to his imagination, Benton 
availed himself of every means of learning more 
about the plains and prairies, which he believed 
would soon be populated by an army of lusty pio- 
neers. Especially was his fancy drawn to the depths 
beyond the Rocky Mountains, his ardent vision 
already descrying the day when the American people 
would take their stand on the shores of the Pacific 
and confront the peoples of the ancient world. 
Little by little, from trapper and trader and explorer, 



THOMAS HART BENTON 115 

from the pathfinder William Clark himself, passing 
the evening of his life in St. Louis, he drew such a 
fund of information that soon not a man in the whole 
United States had equally profound knowledge of 
the far Northwest. 

To be sure, Benton was at first among those who 
imagined that the Rockies must mark the western 
boundary of the United States, and that American 
colonization beyond the mountains would mean the 
creation of an independent Republic. But this did 
not deter him from urging such colonization, if only 
for the reason, to quote from a speech of after years, 
that Oregon ^'should be possessed by our descend- 
ants who will be our friends, and not by aliens who 
will be our enemies."* And soon, although, as is 
indicated by the quotation, he never quite shook off 
his separatistic fancies, he was preaching the occu- 
pation of Oregon on grounds connected solely with 
the increased power, prestige, and wealth that the 
United States would gain thereby. His opportunity 
came with his election in 1820 as one of Missouri's 
first two United States Senators. Arrived at Wash- 
ington, he found at ''Brown's Hotel," where he took 
rooms, Dr. John Floyd, a Virginia Congressman 
who, from a long residence in Kentucky, was deeply 

♦Benton's "Thirty Years' View," vol. II, p. 430. 



ii6 ROMANCE OF AMERICAN EXPANSION 

interested in all phases of Western development, 
and two old acquaintances who had been employed 
by John Jacob Astor to assist in the founding of 
Astoria. The four talked long and frequently con- 
cerning the situation in Oregon — or, to be more 
exact, in the Columbia Valley, in which alone they 
felt an interest — and it was resolved that assistance 
from the Government should be sought to overcome 
the advantage the British were gaining through the 
Hudson's Bay Company's poHcy of killing off 
American trade. Benton for the moment could do 
nothing, as he was precluded from taking his seat 
in the Senate pending the final decision with regard 
to admitting Missouri into the Union; but Floyd 
enthusiastically volunteered to initiate action in the 
House of Representatives. 

His first step was taken in December, 1820, when 
he moved for an inquiry into the expediency of mili- 
tary occupation of the country about the Columbia, 
and succeeded in securing the appointment of a com- 
mittee, of which he himself was made chairman, to 
report on his motion. Now began a patience- 
exhausting struggle which was to last more than a 
quarter of a century. January, 1821, the committee 
made its report, emphasizing the value of the Colum- 
bia Valley as a means of enlarging the commerce of 



THOMAS HART BENTON 117 

the United States — a favorite argument of Benton's 
— by providing a direct line of communication with 
China. At the same time the committee presented 
a bill authorizing official occupation, extinguishment 
of the Indian title, and provision for a government. 
But this measure was allowed to die without reach- 
ing a vote, and a like fate overtook a similar bill 
reported by the same committee in January, 1822. 
In no wise disheartened, Floyd returned to the 
attack, delivering late in the same year the first speech 
ever heard in Congress on the Oregon question. In 
a way, it was a masterly effort, making plain the 
advantages accruing from possession of the Colum- 
bia Valley, and advocating its occupation by United 
States troops. It awakened little enthusiasm, how- 
ever, and was met by the declaration, to be heard 
frequently in the following years, that by extending 
the territory of the United States across the moun- 
tains the Union would be exposed to dismemberment 
and to increased chances of war. 

Meantime, Missouri, after vexatious delays, had 
been granted admission, and Benton his seat in the 
Senate. Rising from that seat, in February, 1823, 
he served notice on his fellow-Senators, that unless 
immediate measures were taken to colonize and 
fortify the Columbia Valley all claim to it might as 



ii8 ROMANCE OF AMERICAN EXPANSION 

well be abandoned. Hitherto, neither Floyd nor 
those who opposed Floyd had touched on the fact 
that the American title had been challenged by 
Great Britain on the ground of prior discovery and 
purchase from the Indians, but Benton in a ringing 
speech set forth the true state of affairs. Unhappily, 
he also indulged in grandiloquent and, as it seemed 
at the time, extravagant suggestions which only 
amused those who heard him. He would occupy 
the Columbia in order, for one thing, to carry the 
lights of religion, science, and free government to 
the ^^ imprisoned and exuberant populations" of 
China and Japan, who might also find their '^gran- 
ary" in its smiling valley. And, with a fine outburst 
of new West indignation, he declared: "I, for one, 
had as lief see American ministers going to the 
Emperors of China and Japan, to the King of Per- 
sia, and even to the Grand Turk, as to see them 
dancing attendance upon those European legiti- 
mates who hold everything American in contempt and 
detestation." * At which everybody in and out of the 
Senate, save those who shared Benton's faith in the 
trans-Pacific destinies of the United States, laughed 
heartily, and forgot all about the really vital issue of 
forestalling the British in the occupation of Oregon. 

* Benton's " Thirty Years' View," vol. I, p. 14. 




Thomas Hart Benton 
From a portrait in the possession of the Missouri Historical Society. 



THOMAS HART BENTON 119 

In the House the zealous Floyd was more for- 
tunate. On December 21,, 1824, or more than four 
years after he had first brought the subject to the 
attention of his colleagues, he had the satisfaction 
of participating in the passage of a bill by which the 
President was authorized to occupy the Columbia 
Valley with a military force, and to set up a territorial 
government whenever he might find it expedient to 
do so. The Senate, however, had still to be reck- 
oned with and the Senate proved obdurate, despite 
Benton's vehement pleadings; the decisive argument 
being advanced by Dickerson, of New Jersey, who 
asserted that military occupation would lead to a 
war with Great Britain, and justly, as an infraction 
of the convention of 181 8 providing for joint occupa- 
tion by the two countries. Upon this Benton, 
when the opportunity again offered, sought to attain 
his object by terminating the joint occupation. The 
ten-year period would come to an end in 1828, and 
he begged the Senate not to ratify any renewal of 
the agreement, but to insist instead on a settlement 
'^on the basis of a separation of interests, and the 
establishment of a permanent boundary" between 
the English and American possessions west of the 
Rocky Mountains. 

Again he was doomed to disappointment. By 



I20 ROMANCE OF AMERICAN EXPANSION 

the convention of 1818 the forty-ninth parallel had 
been accepted as the boundary between British 
North America and the United States from the Lake 
of the Woods to the base of the Rocky Mountains; 
but all attempts made by the United States to per- 
suade the British Government to carry that line to 
the Pacific proved fruitless. Over the mountains it 
would indeed carry it, but only to the point where 
it touched the Columbia River, which was thence 
to form the boundary to the ocean. Thus Great 
Britain would gain a waterway and a large slice of 
territory to which the United States felt herself 
rightfully entitled. It was on this rock that negotia 
tions were wrecked in 181 8, leading to the joint 
occupation compromise; and for this reason failure 
again resulted when negotiations were resumed in 
1826, after Russia had abandoned the contest and by 
treaty with both her rivals consented to accept the 
parallel of fifty-four degrees, forty minutes, as the 
southern boundary of her American possessions. 
The following year, as the only peaceful way out of 
the difficulty, it was agreed that the convention of 
1818 should be renewed, not for a definite but an 
indefinite period, terminable on twelve months' 
notice by either party. This new convention, not- 
withstanding Benton's direful predictions, the Senate 



THOMAS HART BENTON 121 

duly ratified, only six Senators uniting with the 
champion of Oregon to vote against ratification. 

Thereafter, with the exception of a futile effort 
by Floyd, in 1829, to secure the passage of a bill for 
the construction of forts west of the Rockies and 
the exploration of the region, the Oregon Question 
slumbered for nearly a decade so far as Congress 
was concerned. Floyd's withdrawal from the House 
left Oregon no champion there, and Benton, in the 
Senate, was too preoccupied with the more urgent 
business that now devolved upon him as exponent 
and advocate of the policies of President Jackson. 
But he did not lose sight of his country's transmon- 
tane interests, however much he might despair for 
them; and it is easy to imagine the satisfaction with 
which he followed and, so far as he could, promoted 
the extra- Congressional movement that soon set 
in and was ultimately to vindicate the American 
claims. It has already been observed that one of 
the reasons for the prevalent apathy was the lack 
of information respecting the resources and charac- 
ter of Oregon. To no small extent this was remedied 
by the publication of the detailed reports of the 
legislative committees appointed from time to time 
to inquire into the subject. Enlightenment also 
came through the tales carried home by the explorers 



122 ROMANCE OF AMERICAN EXPANSION 

who, beginning with the discovery of the famous 
South Pass through the Rockies in 1823, ranged all 
through the Columbia Valley in the interests of 
American rivals to the Hudson's Bay Company. 
Thus stimulated, popular interest in the disputed 
territory -steadily augmented, until a demand began 
to be heard from different parts of the country, and 
notably from Benton's State, for land grants in 
Oregon and disruption of the monopoly which the 
Hudson's Bay Company, a purely British organiza- 
tion, had enjoyed ever since its absorption of the 
Northwest Company, the purchaser of the single 
American trading post of Astoria. The debate on 
Floyd's bill, in 1829, revealed the fact that three 
distinct companies of would-be emigrants, one of 
which was from Massachusetts and was said to 
number three thousand souls, were petitioning Con- 
gress for land across the Rockies. Nothing came of 
these petitions, but nevertheless, influenced perhaps 
by the extravagant pictures of the eccentric Boston 
schoolmaster. Hall Kelley, who for some years had 
been lecturing on the riches of Oregon, an expedition 
started from New England in 1832 under the leader- 
ship of Nathaniel Wyeth, of Cambridge, Massa- 
chusetts. 
The real colonization of Oregon, however, the 



THOMAS HART BENTON 123 

movement which Floyd and Benton had so long 
hoped to see under way, began two years later with 
the arrival from the East of a small party of American 
missionaries to the Oregon Indians. Soon other 
missionaries followed, including the celebrated 
Marcus Whitman, about whom an interesting legend 
has been woven in connection with the ^^ great migra- 
tion" which presently brought upwards of a thou- 
sand American colonists into Oregon * Settling on 
the Willamette and Walla Walla Rivers, and estab- 
lishing a branch on Lapwai Creek, not far from its 
junction with the Clearwater, these missionaries 
gradually attracted about their stations not merely 

* The story, still repeated by many writers, is to the effect that Whit- 
man, while visiting a post of the Hudson's Bay Company, heard of a 
scheme to fill the Columbia Valley with colonists from Canada, and at 
once resolved to hasten to Washington, acquaint the authorities with the 
situation, and urge immediate colonization from the United States. 
Saddling a horse and starting out, despite the protests of his associates, 
he made the long journey eastward at imminent peril of his life, intent 
only on "saving Oregon" for his country. At Washington he met with 
a frigid reception from Secretary of State Webster and President Tyler, 
but secured from the latter a promise that if the feasibility of a wagon 
route across the Rockies could be demonstrated, he would do all in his 
power to promote colonization and keep the British from winning Ore- 
gon. With this promise in mind, the legend further has it. Whitman 
himself organized the "great migration," and guided it safely across 
the continent. Unfortunately for this romantic narrative, documentary 
evidence has been adduced by Professors Bourne and Marshall showing 
that the reason for Whitman's journey was to "save," not Oregon, 
but his mission station, which he had learned the Board of Missions 
purposed abolishing; and that he simply availed himself of "the great 
migration" as a means of securing an escort on the way back to the 
Columbia Valley. 



124 ROMANCE OF AMERICAN EXPANSION 

the Indians they had come to convert, but little 
groups of settlers from the United States; and in 
this way, though at first so slowly that it is estimated 
there were at the end of 1841 not more than four 
hundred Americans in all Oregon, the American 
farmer began to dispute supremacy in the Columbia 
Valley with the British trapper and trader. Immi- 
gration, however, still hesitated, owing to the uncer- 
tainty as to territorial rights, and it was to end this 
uncertainty that Benton's colleague from Missouri, 
Lewis F. Linn, in February, 1838, brought in a bill 
for the occupation of the Columbia by troops from 
the United States, and the establishment of a Terri- 
tory to be known as Oregon Territory. 

Once more the question of title had been thrust 
upon the attention of an unwilling Government, and 
this time with an insistence that would not be denied. 
Benton, as stanch an expansionist as ever, hurried 
to Linn's assistance — if, indeed, he had not in- 
spired his action — and, by securing reference of 
the bill to a select committee with Linn at its head, 
insured a favorable report on the measure. But it 
proved impossible to bring about a favorable vote, 
and again the contest dragged, the only immediate 
result of the Missourians' efforts, renewed in 1839, 
1840, 1 84 1, and 1842, being an access of popular 



THOMAS HART BENTON 125 

interest in Oregon and a slowly increasing drift 
Oregonward of settlers from the United States. To 
further this movement, Benton, now more deter- 
mined than ever to force a territorial adjustment 
with Great Britain, hit upon the expedient of send- 
ing out his son-in-law, John C. Fremont, a young 
officer in the United States army, to explore the coun- 
try west of Missouri and up to and beyond the 
Rockies. 

Fremont's special business, as Benton explains 
in his invaluable ^'Thirty Years' View," was to 
locate the South Pass and fix the most direct route 
for emigration to the Columbia; it being believed 
that emigration would also be encouraged .by the 
fact that Fremont's work had the sanction and 
support of the Government. His exploration was 
completed in the summer of 1842, and was an 
entire success. The next year witnessed the ^^ great 
migration" of the thousand sturdy Americans who, 
starting out in a long caravan of ''prairie schooners" 
from near the site of Kansas City, in Benton's own 
picturesque language, made ''their long pilgrimage 
overland from the frontiers of Missouri, with their 
wives and children, their flocks and herds, their 
implements of husbandry and weapons of defense 
— traversing the vast inclined plane to the base of 



126 ROMANCE OF AMERICAN EXPANSION 

the Rocky Mountains, crossing that barrier (deemed 
impassable by Europeans) and descending the wide 
slope which declines from the mountains to the 
Pacific."* History was in truth repeating itself. 
The sons of pioneer fathers and grandfathers, who 
had themselves crossed a mountain barrier to find 
homes in a land where nature and the savage formerly 
reigned supreme, they in their turn were answering 
the call of the wilderness, the invitation of the setting 
sun. Not to separate from the Union, but to strike 
the roots of the Union more deeply and more widely 
into America, to bring up children who, in a free 
and open world, should labor in their generation 
for the Union — such, however indistinctly they 
were conscious of it, was the mission of those early 
voyagers of the prairie. 

Meantime, important events were transpiring at 
Washington. Despatched thither by Great Britain 
to effect a settlement of the Maine boundary and 
other long-standing disputes. Lord Ashburton in 
June, 1842, began negotiations with Secretary 
Webster which it was confidently expected by many 
in the United States would end for all time the 
troublesome Oregon question. But when the 
Webster-Ashburton Treaty was finally framed and 

♦Benton's "Thirty Years' View," vol. II, p. 469- 



THOMAS HART BENTON 127 

sent to the Senate for ratification, it was found that 
Oregon was not so much as mentioned, the sole 
allusion to it being contained in President Tyler's 
message accompanying the treaty. '^ After sundry 
informal communications with the British Minister 
upon the subject of the claims of the two countries 
to the west of the Rocky Mountains," explained 
Tyler, who evidently felt that some explanation was 
necessary, ^^so little probability was found to exist 
of coming to any agreement on that subject at 
present that it was not thought expedient to make 
it one of the subjects of formal negotiation to 
be entered upon between this Government and 
the British Minister as part of his duties under 
his special mission."* Now, for the first time, 
popular feeling began to run really high, and 
on every side were heard expressions of disap- 
pointment and resentment, symptoms of a nascent 
animosity which was sedulously fanned by the 
wrathful Benton. 

In one of his longest and ablest speeches on the 
Oregon question, delivered when the Webster- 
Ashburton Treaty came up for ratification, he ex- 
posed mercilessly the shortcomings of the diplomacy 

* James D. Richardson's "Messages and Papers of the Presidents," 
vol. IV, p. 166. 



128 ROMANCE OF AMERICAN EXPANSION 

of the past in giving Great Britain an opportunity to 
set up a claim to the valley of the Columbia, pre- 
sented clearly the superior grounds of the American 
claim, giving title, he pointed out, to all the region 
west of the Rockies between the forty-second and 
forty-ninth parallels; and denounced in unmeasured 
terms the silence obtaining in the treaty. '^The 
President tells us," he sarcastically cried, "that 
there is ^no probability of coming to any agreement 
at present.' Then, when can the agreement be 
made ? If refused now, when is it to come ? Never, 
until we show that we prefer war to ignominious 
peace." ''The fact is," he continued, waxing angrier 
with every word, ''no agreement is ever intended. 
Contented with her possession, Great Britain wants 
delay that time may ripen possession into title, and 
fortunate events facilitate her designs. My col- 
league [Linn] and myself were sounded on this 
point. Our answers forbade the belief that we 
would compromise or sacrifice the rights and in- 
terests of our country; and this may have been the 
reason why there were no 'formal negotiations' in 
relation to it. Had we been 'soft enough,' there 
might have been an agreement to divide our country 
by the river, or to refer the whole title to the decision 
of a friendly sovereign. We were not soft enough 



THOMAS HART BENTON 129 

for that."* He would, therefore, urge all who heard 
him to vote against the ratification of the treaty. 

In this plea he failed, and the treaty was duly 
ratified. But so thoroughly had he aroused the 
Senate that a demand arose for action on Linn's 
latest bill, which included a land grant of six hun- 
dred and forty acres to every white male emigrant 
to Oregon. Then began a stormy debate, with 
Benton and Linn meeting a powerful opposition 
headed by none other than John C. Calhoun, him- 
self at that very moment moving earth and sky to 
achieve the annexation of Texas. Let matters 
stand as they are, urged Calhoun, and ^'silent immi- 
gration" will finally save Oregon for the United 
States without involving the nation in the possi- 
bilities of a war. Here, manifestly, was the baneful 
influence of sectionalism. Oregon would not bene- 
fit, nay, was likely to injure, the slavery system 
and the political power of the slaveholding States. 
Therefore it would not do to feel over-anxious about 
Oregon. But not even the eloquence of Calhoun 
could stem the tide. Passing the Senate, though by 
the narrowest of margins, Linn's bill was hurried to 
the House ; where, however, to the joy of its enemies, 
it met an opposition too strong to be beaten down. 

* Benton's "Thirty Years' View," vol. II, pp. 428-29. 



130 ROMANCE OF AMERICAN EXPANSION 

Before Congress again assembled Linn had died, 
and Benton remained the sole survivor of the origi- 
nal champions of Oregon, with victory seemingly 
as remote as ever. Then, suddenly and unexpect- 
edly, the situation completely changed, in a way 
that at last presaged definite action. But it was not 
a change altogether to Benton's liking. He had 
preached unfalteringly the doctrine of war, if it were 
necessary to go to war to secure American rights 
beyond the Rockies. He had not preached what 
now began to be asserted with the greatest freedom 
— that American rights beyond the Rockies included 
the entire country from California to Russian 
America, and that the United States should give 
battle rather than relinquish any part of it. Nor 
was this assertion made only by reckless and excited 
individuals. It was even voiced by the head of the 
nation, the discredited Tyler, President without a 
party, and prepared to go to any length to obtain 
one. To curry favor with the Democrats of the 
South he had espoused the cause of Texas annexa- 
tion; similarly, to obtain popularity among the 
Democrats of the North and West, he declared, in 
his annual Message to Congress, December, 1843, 
that ''after a rigid and, as far as practicable, un- 
biased examination of the subject, the United States 



THOMAS HART BENTON 131 

have always contended that their rights appertain 
to the entire region of country lying on the Pacific 
and embraced within north latitude forty-two de- 
grees and north latitude fifty-four degrees, forty 
minutes." 

Caught up as a party cry, and with the Preoccu- 
pation" of the whole of Oregon inserted side by side 
with the annexation of Texas as a plank of the 
Democratic platform on which James K. Polk was 
nominated for the Presidency, the country during 
the campaign of 1844 rang with the defiant slogan 
of '' Fifty-four forty or fight ! " * From Great Britain 

* The publication of this chapter in The Outlook drew from a 
Nebraska correspondent, signing himself C. G. P., the following interest- 
ing statement: "In 'The Romance of Expansion' I was much inter- 
ested in the settlement of the question of the Northwestern Boundary, 
particularly so because I have a bit of unwritten history in connection 
with it. About the year 1840 a young man by the name of Enoch W. 
Eastman, fully equipped for the practice of law, came from Vermont 
to Burlington, Iowa, and put out his shingle. Until the beginning of 
the Civil War he was an old-line Democrat. He soon rose to promi- 
nence in politics. When Iowa applied for admission as a State, he was 
one of the commission sent to Washington with that business, and was 
himself instrumental in fixing the boundaries as they now stand. He 
was Lieutenant-Governor during the war, and after that was always 
called 'Governor Eastman.' After the war he again took up the prac- 
tice of law in Eldora, where he spent the remainder of his life. During 
the Prohibition campaign in Iowa he was an active advocate of the 
amendment. I was living at the time in Whitten. He came there to 
speak, and I had the honor of entertaining him. In conversation he 
was telling me some things about the early history of Iowa. Something 
he said reminded me of it, and I asked him if he remembered the old 
Democratic watchword, 'Fifty-four forty or fight.' He raised his right 
hand, and with great force brought it down upon his knee, saying, 



132 ROMANCE OF AMERICAN EXPANSION 

came back distinctly warlike echoes, increasing 
when Polk in his inaugural displayed every sign of 
intending to stand squarely on the platform that 
had elected him. Already, however, it was evident 
that the United States would be involved in one war 
as the result of the annexation of Texas; and neither 
Polk nor anybody save '^fifty-four forty" extremists 
of the type of Cass, of Michigan, and Hannegan, of 
Indiana, was willing to see her engaged in another. 
A compromise, then, was assured — provided Great 
Britain would compromise. That was the rub. 
July, 1845, Buchanan, then Secretary of State, 
offered the old line of the forty-ninth parallel between 
the British and American possessions west of the 
Rockies, an offer which was rejected by the British 
Minister, Pakenham, in terms that were regarded 
as offensive. 

To give Polk the credit that seems fairly his due, 

'That was first written on that knee.' He was a delegate to a Demo- 
cratic county convention. The convention was held in the open air. 
The committee on resolutions, not being accustomed to that sort of 
work, asked him to help them. He took a piece of wrapping paper, 
spread it on his knee, and, after writing some resolutions about local 
politics, added, 'In the matter of the Northwestern Boundary we are 
for Fifty-four forty or fight.' The State convention met a few days 
later and adopted the same resolution. It was then taken up by the 
Democratic press and speakers and spread like wildfire. The public 
did not know and could not guess who was the author. In the guesses 
many prominent Democrats were named, but most of them centered 
on Lewis Cass, of Michigan." In The Outlook, vol. XC, p. 87. 



THOMAS HART BENTON 133 

it was probably his action in withdrawing Buchanan's 
offer and reasserting, as he did in his first annual 
Message, December, 1845, his determination to 
stand out for the whole of Oregon, that brought 
Great Britain into a more pliant frame of mind. 
Polk, as subsequent events showed, was ''bluffing" 
— to use a homely but expressive phrase — yet 
without his ''bluff" the controversy would scarcely 
have been settled on the precise terms which the 
United States had from the first been willing to 
accept — and terms, it cannot be too thoroughly 
understood, which were absolutely just. Of late 
years the tendency among historical writers has been 
to decry the settlement as an act of almost criminal 
concession on the part of the Administration — 
whereas it is perhaps the most praiseworthy measure 
which the Polk government achieved. In any event, 
Polk's seeming inflexibility, supported by the action 
of Congress in authorizing him to give the neces- 
sary twelve months' notice terminating the joint 
occupation agreement, convinced Great Britain 
that concession on her part was imperative if she 
would avoid a war; and no more than the United 
States did she desire to engage in hostilities. Before 
the summer of 1846 arrived, she had made a com- 
plete surrender, yielding her claims in the valley of 



134 ROMANCE OF AMERICAN EXPANSION 

the Columbia and accepting the forty-ninth parallel 
as the demarcation line between her far West posses- 
sions and those of the United States. 

Still the situation was not free from danger. So 
strong was the ^'fifty-four forty" sentiment in the 
Senate that it was questionable whether a treaty 
constituting the forty-ninth parallel as the boundary 
line would be ratified ; and non-ratification would not 
merely embarrass the Administration, but almost 
surely lead to increased complications with Great 
Britain. In his dilemma Polk turned to the one 
man who, he felt, could save the day for him and for 
Oregon — Benton, of Missouri. Already one of 
the most abused statesmen in the country by reason 
of the bravery and honesty with which he denied the 
right of the United States to any part of Oregon 
north of the forty-ninth parallel, Benton cheerfully 
accepted the added burden laid upon him. His 
counsel to Polk was to fall back upon an obsolete 
custom and request the Senate to give him, as Presi- 
dent, its advice upon the terms of the treaty to be 
negotiated with Great Britain, submitting, for such 
advice, a draft of the treaty that had been already 
arranged. By this device the responsibility for 
receding from the ''fifty-four forty" line would be 
shifted from the President to the Senate. Eagerly 



THOMAS HART BENTON 



135 



Polk clutched at this straw. But, he nervously 
asked, would the Senate take the desired action, a 
two-thirds vote being requisite? Benton engaged 
that it would, and, to make good his pledge, saw 
personally every Senatorial member of the opposition 
party — the Whig party — and secured the promise 
of sufficient votes to carry the day over those Demo- 
crats who, like Cass and Hannegan, would have all 
of Oregon or none. 

June 10, 1846, the "advice" was asked. It was 
an anxious moment for both Polk and Benton, 
facing a torrent of angry invective and denounced 
as traitors to their party and their country. For two 
days the storm raged, and then, the Whigs faithfully 
falling into line, by thirty-seven votes to twelve the 
President's wishes were met in a terse, businesslike 
resolution. Three days afterwards the treaty itself 
was signed by the Secretary of State and the British 
Minister, and in another two days the Senate ratified 
it by an increased vote on each side — forty-one in 
favor of, and fourteen opposed to, ratification. In 
such wise, nearly thirty years after he had uttered 
his first protest against the presence of the British 
in the pleasant lands about the Columbia River, did 
Thomas Hart Benton triumph in the cause he had 
so stoutly advocated. 



CHAPTER VI 

JOHN CHARLES FREMONT AND THE CONQUEST OF 
CALIFORNIA 

The Mexican War, by which the United States 
gained her second Pacific coast acquisition and 
rounded out her contiguous possessions on the North 
American continent, has long been a subject of 
warm debate. The prevaihng view is that it was a 
war of shameless aggression and spoliation, forced 
on Mexico in the interests of the slaveholders of the 
Southern States. Against this, and not wholly 
without reason, it is urged that the war was the 
outcome not of a sectional but of a national desire, 
and extenuating circumstances are found in the 
manifest eagerness of the Mexican people to engage 
in hostilities, the persistent refusal of the Mexican 
Government to pay damage claims duly awarded 
to the United States by international arbitration, 
and the summary treatment accorded the commis- 
sioner sent by President Polk to negotiate a peaceful 
settlement of these claims and of the difficulties 

growing out of the annexation of Texas. Both 

136 



JOHN CHARLES FREMONT 137 

views agree, however, in affirming that the prime 
object of the war was to compel a boundary read- 
justment which should give the United States pos- 
session of the whole of Texas, as anciently delimited, 
and of the fertile region of California, with its smiling 
plains and valleys, its lofty mountains, and its splen- 
did frontage on the Pacific. 

Possession of California had, indeed, been de- 
sired by the United States years before resort was 
had to war as a means of obtaining it. Attention 
was first directed to it by the efforts of Benton and 
Floyd and their coadjutors to make sure of Oregon, 
and shortly afterwards interest was increased by the 
reports of traders and trappers, who brought home 
impressive accounts of California's beauty and 
riches. Beginning with 1822, when a maritime 
trade was opened between Boston and Monterey, a 
steady, if long insignificant, stream of immigration 
from the United States trickled into the country. 
The passage of the Act of 1830, by which Mexico, 
for the special purpose of checking American 
immigration into Texas, forbade further foreign 
colonization of her border provinces, had no effect 
in retarding the inflow into California. The local 
authorities, always jealous of the central Govern- 
ment and enjoying exceptional freedom of action 



138 ROMANCE OF AMERICAN EXPANSION 

by reason of their remoteness from the capital, 
welcomed immigrants as cordially as before and 
bestowed on them generous privileges and extensive 
land grants. 

Thus, had it not been that, as in the case of Oregon, 
the American people felt no immediate need of 
crossing the Rocky Mountains, there would have set 
in a movement which, given the continuance of a 
weak and divided native population, would probably 
have resulted in the speedy Americanization of Cali- 
fornia and its absorption into the United States in 
much the same way as Texas. As it was, immigra- 
tion lagged to such an extent that in 1836, or about 
the time President Jackson made an effort to acquire 
by purchase at least a part of California, the American 
population aggregated rather less than three hun- 
dred; and ten years later, at the beginning of the 
conquest, it was still scarcely four hundred out of a 
total population of between eight and nine thou- 
sand.* Of the Americans, the majority were lo- 
cated in Monterey, then the great center of trade, 
and on ranches in the Sacramento Valley, particu- 
larly in the neighborhood of New Helvetia, or Sutter's 
Fort, as it was known from the name of its owner, 

* These estimates are based on figures found in the California volumes 
of Bancroft's "History of the Pacific States of North America," and in 
Josiah Royce's "California." 



JOHN CHARLES FREMONT 139 

John A. Sutter, the wealthiest ranchero in the valley 
and an American by adoption although a Swiss by 
birth. On the whole, the relations between the 
foreigners and the natives remained friendly, despite 
some occasional friction. The Calif ornians them- 
selves, it should be noted, were frequently on the 
verge of civil war, owing to the constant intrigues of 
their military commander. General Jose Castro, to 
undermine the authority of the civil governor, Pio 
Pico. 

Such was the situation when President Polk made 
up his mind that the acquisition of California was 
not merely desirable but absolutely necessary to the 
United States. In reaching this decision he was no 
doubt influenced to a considerable extent by the 
wishes of his fellow-Southerners, who had been 
disappointed by the admission of Texas as a single 
State instead of several States, and felt that, if the 
system they upheld was to endure, a way must be 
found to obtain additional territory open to slavery. 
But there also is reason to believe that Polk looked 
at the subject from a national as well as a sectional 
point of view, and was sincerely persuaded that 
unless the United States took possession of California 
it would, in its weak and defenseless condition, in- 
evitably pass from the ownership of Mexico to that 



I40 ROMANCE OF AMERICAN EXPANSION 

of some foreign Power. It will be remembered that 
one of the most potent factors in bringing about the 
annexation of Texas was the fear of the baneful 
influence that might be exercised by Great Britain 
or France if Texas remained an independent republic, 
rumor crediting the Governments of those countries 
with sinister designs against the welfare of the United 
States. Similarly, it was reported that both Great 
Britain and France were only awaiting a favorable 
opportunity to wrest California from Mexico; and 
such v/as the excitement created by this report that 
in 1842, during Tyler's administration, under the 
belief that war had then broken out between Mexico 
and the United States, and anxious to forestall action 
by any other power, Commodore Thomas Ap Catesby 
Jones, of the American navy, sailed to Monterey 
with a squadron, seized the port, and raised the 
American flag; which was, however, lowered on the 
discovery that peace still prevailed. 

Just what foundation there was for the dread of 
foreign intervention in California cannot be stated 
until closer research shall have been made among 
the archives of the countries chiefly concerned. 
Certainly the activity of foreign diplomats and the 
maneuvers of foreign fleets tended to give color 
to the apprehensions entertained by Polk and by 



JOHN CHARLES FREMONT 141 

Americans of all sections. Bearing this in mind, 
and remembering likewise the expansionistic ten- 
dencies of the time and the anxiety of the leaders of 
the slaveholding States to strengthen their position 
against the increasing power of the non-slaveholding 
North, it is easy to understand the resolution taken 
by the President and his advisers to insist on the 
cession of California as part of the price to be paid 
by Mexico if she would avoid a war. 

To this end, and in the hope that Mexico might 
yield peaceably what otherwise was to be taken from 
her by force, Polk despatched John Slidell, of New 
Orleans, to the Mexican capital, several months 
after Mexico had severed diplomatic relations with 
the United States in consequence of the annexation 
of Texas. Slidell went as a minister plenipotentiary, 
empowered to negotiate concerning all difficulties 
between the two Governments, and instructed to 
exert his best endeavors in conciliating the ]\Iexicans. 
His instructions further directed him, however, to 
press for a settlement on a territorial basis, securing a 
new boundary line between Mexico and the United 
States, which should give the latter New Mexico and 
California in addition to Texas. For New Mexico 
Slidell was authorized to offer five million dollars 
and the assumption by the United States Govern- 



142 ROMANCE OF AMERICAN EXPANSION 

ment of the unpaid damage claims; for California 
he was authorized to offer far more — twenty-five 
million dollars if the line should be drawn so as to 
give the United States all of the province north of 
and including Monterey, and twenty million dollars 
should it include only San Francisco and the country 
north of San Francisco. 

What answer the Mexican Government would 
have returned to these demands is impossible to 
say. For, emboldened by the popular clamor for 
war, it peremptorily refused to receive Slidell. Nor 
did he profit by lingering until, with almost incredible 
fatuity, the Mexicans so far forgot their common 
danger as to indulge in a revolution and establish a 
new Government. Like its predecessor, it would 
have nothing to do with Slidell. His departure, in 
March, 1846, marked the end of negotiations. In 
April Mexican troops were deliberately provoked 
into striking the first blow, and in May war was 
formally declared by the United States Congress. 
Before the end of summer General Stephen W. 
Kearny had made himself master of New Mexico 
and was hurriedly marching to conquer California. 
But long ere Kearny's arrival that province had 
been practically won for the United States, by means 
so audacious and so romantic as to fasten the atten- 



JOHN CHARLES FREMONT 143 

tion of the entire nation on the leading actor in the 
conquest, John Charles Fremont, a man previously 
unheard of as a soldier but well known as a daring 
and successful explorer. 

Even before his California exploits Fremont's 
career had, in fact, been meteoric and spectacular. 
It was, too, essentially of his own making. Born at 
Savannah in 1813, the son of a French refugee who 
had married into one of the best families of Virginia, 
he started in life as a schoolmaster. But soon, as 
the result perhaps of tendencies inherited from his 
father, who was of a venturesome and roving dis- 
position, he abandoned teaching in favor of survey- 
ing. Such was the ability he showed that, when 
barely turned twenty, he was employed by the 
Federal Government to make a railway survey 
among the mountains of the Carolinas and Ten- 
nessee. This work completed, he was immediately 
appointed to assist the French explorer Nicollet, who 
had planned an expedition to the headwaters of the 
Mississippi, in the interests of geographical science; 
and about the same time, on the recommendation of 
Joel R. Poinsett, then Secretary of War, President 
Van Buren commissioned him to a lieutenancy in 
the corps of topographical engineers. 

The Nicollet expedition kept Fremont busily en- 



144 ROMANCE OF AMERICAN EXPANSION 

gaged through the years 1838 and 1839. In the 
following year he made the acquaintance of Thomas 
Hart Benton, who, attracted by his pleasing per- 
sonality and by his evident enthusiasm over the 
prospects of the new West, formed a strong liking 
for the young man. A frequent visitor to Benton's 
house, he there met and became deeply enamored 
of Benton's daughter Jessie, still in her teens, beau- 
tiful, imaginative, proud, and ambitious. She, for 
her part, found in Fremont the ideal of her dreams. 
Parental opposition, on the score of the young offi- 
cer's poverty and scant prospect of advancement, 
only strengthened their love, and after a stormy 
courtship they were married in 1841. For a time 
Benton raged. Then he surrendered at discretion. 
And presently Fremont was in the wilderness once 
more, engaged in the important task of fixing a 
direct route for immigration to Oregon. It was 
a project dear to Benton's heart, and a splendid 
opportunity for Benton's son-in-law. So well did 
he utilize it that, after a summer of hardships and 
achievements, the most noteworthy of which was 
the hazardous planting of the Stars and Stripes on a 
sky-challenging Rocky Mountain summit, he was 
hailed as among the greatest of modern explorers. 
This was in 1842. The next year he was again 




John Charles Fremont 



JOHN CHARLES FREMONT 145 

at the head of an exploring expedition, under orders 
to cross the Rockies and penetrate through Oregon 
to the shores of the Pacific. Outward bound all 
went well, but on his way home, deceived by errone- 
ous reports as to the feasibility of the route he had 
selected, he and his exhausted followers were driven 
far to the south by snow and storm and impassable 
mountains. Unable to secure a guide, they wan- 
dered for months over the heights and through the 
depths of the Sierra Nevada, finally reaching the 
Sacramento Valley after terrific sufferings and when 
hope was all but gone. Here they were hospitably 
received by the generous Sutter, and here Fremont 
obtained his first glimpse of the glories of California. 
Now, doubtless, if not before, he began to dream of 
finding a route by which to connect this western 
paradise with the far-away frontier settlements of 
his own country; and such was actually one of the 
principal objects of his next expedition, begun in the 
autumn of 1845, but cut short by the stirring events 
of the conquest. 

As has been said, the relations between the Cali- 
fornians and the ^American settlers in California 
were at that time friendly. But there was, never- 
theless, a well-grounded fear among the authorities 
that, in the event of war between the United States 



146 ROMANCE OF AMERICAN EXPANSION 

and Mexico, California would be the first point of 
attack, and consequently, so far as their resources 
and mutual jealousies would permit, they were on 
the alert to guard against a surprise. The unex- 
pected appearance of Fremont and his men at 
Sutter's Fort, after their harrowing experiences in 
the Sierras, had created no small astonishment and 
some alarm; and when it was rumored that he was 
back in California with a still larger following, there 
was much speculation as to the purpose of his com- 
ing. Fremont himself, though with only a small 
escort, hastened to Monterey to explain to General 
Castro that his expedition was purely scientific in 
character, and to request permission to enter and 
explore in California; after which he brought the 
remainder of his party, numbering in all sixty- two 
backwoodsmen, plainsmen, voyageurs, and Indians, 
across the mountains and down to the sea, where he 
went into camp near Monterey. It soon became 
evident that he had no immediate intention of re- 
newing his journey, and Castro, in a panic, de- 
spatched an officer to inform him that, in compliance 
with the Mexican law against the admission of 
foreigners, he must withdraw from the province. 

It was now that Fremont gave a signal display of 
the combined daring and rashness that was to carry 



JOHN CHARLES FREMONT 147 

him triumphantly through California before the 
year was out. Instead of obeying Castro's order, 
or at most remonstrating in diplomatic language, he 
returned a defiant reply and proceeded to erect 
fortifications on the summit of Gavilan Peak, on 
which he also raised the American flag. All Mon- 
terey and the region round about was at once thrown 
into the wildest excitement. Blustering vehemently, 
and calling upon the citizens to unite with him in 
defense of their country, Castro quickly organized 
an army to expel the bold intruders. But beyond 
marching and countermarching in full view of the 
garrison on Gavilan Peak he dared not go. To 
storm the rude fort meant the ascent of a precipitous 
height guarded by sixty-two well-armed sharp- 
shooters, and Castro, unused to w^arfare save by 
proclamation, had no fancy to make the attempt. 
Fortunately for the valiant Californian, Fremont in 
a few days realized the utter illegality of his position, 
and, evacuating his defenses, beat a leisurely retreat, 
with the intention of resuming his Oregon explora- 
tions. But, on the very border of Oregon, he was 
overtaken by a United States army officer, Lieu- 
tenant Archibald Gillespie, the bearer of important 
letters from Senator Benton, and of a still more 
important secret despatch from Secretary of State 



148 ROMANCE OF AMERICAN EXPANSION 

Buchanan, containing information and instructions 
which started Fremont and his men southward again, 
fast as they could march. 

The exact nature of the instructions thus delivered 
in the heart of the picturesque California wilderness 
has been debated almost as vigorously as the Mexican 
War itself. Fremont's own account, long accepted 
without question, asserts that he was distinctly 
authorized to take whatever measures he might 
deem proper to secure California for the United 
States. But the researches of recent historians of 
the conquest, notably Hubert Howe Bancroft and 
his collaborators, indicate that he was simply directed 
to keep an eye on the progress of events, and co- 
operate with United States Consul Larkin, of Mon- 
terey, to whom also Gillespie had brought a secret 
despatch appointing him to serve as a confidential 
agent of the United States in promoting annexa- 
tionistic sentiments among the native population. 
Proceeding on this view of the case, it is argued that 
Fremont acted in deliberate disobedience of his 
orders, that the course he pursued hindered rather 
than helped the conquest, and that on him must be 
placed the responsibility for the subsequent ani- 
mosity between the victors and the vanquished. 
That he disobeyed orders seems borne out by the 



JOHN CHARLES FREMONT 149 

facts brought to light of late years; but, at all events 
in the opinion of the present writer, the other accu- 
sations are unwarranted. 

It must be remembered that besides appointing 
confidential agents with instructions to confine their 
efforts to the cultivation of a friendly understanding 
with the Californians, the United States Govern- 
ment directed Commodore Sloat to take possession 
of the ports of the province at the first news of war 
with Mexico, and further ordered General Kearny 
to march an army overland for active co-operation 
with Sloat. Now, although it is true that a native 
faction was quite willing to see California peacefully 
absorbed by the United States, it is ridiculous to 
suppose that the secret agents could have so man- 
aged affairs that the population as a whole would 
feel not so much as resentment at the forcible seizure 
of their country. Some degree of patriotism must 
be conceded even to the despised Calif ornian. And 
albeit Fremont began the fighting, he was likewise 
the first to attempt, by kindness, moderation, and 
generosity, to heal the wounds inevitable in every 
conquest; and had it not been for later events com- 
pletely beyond his control, might well have won 
additional fame as a pacificator. As to the charge 
that he hindered rather than helped the conquest, it 



150 ROMANCE OF AMERICAN EXPANSION 

need only be said, as we are now about to learn, that 
it was his boldness of action, if disobedience of 
orders, which nerved the vacillating Sloat to play the 
role assigned to him by the authorities at Washington. 
Viewed in the sober light of historical investigation, 
Fremont undoubtedly presents a less heroic appear- 
ance than that with which tradition has invested 
him. But he still remains the most impressive and 
the most attractive figure connected with the con- 
quest. 

His meeting with Gillespie took place on the 
evening of May 9, 1846. Within little more than a 
fortnight he was back in the Sacramento Valley, 
where he found the American settlers greatly dis- 
turbed by reports that Castro was mustering an 
army to expel them from California. Fremont's 
return only increased the excitement, it being felt 
that he must have learned that the lives of his country- 
men were in danger. As a matter of fact, while 
Castro was probably incensed and suspicious, as a 
result not merely of Fremont's defiance but also of 
the rumored plans of the United States Government 
to take forcible possession of California, the evidence 
indicates that he did not contemplate any move 
against the Sacramento Valley Americans. Such, 
none the less, was the common belief, fortified, too, 



JOHN CHARLES FREMONT 151 

by the posting of a forged proclamation purporting 
to come from him and ordering all foreigners to 
leave the country. Taking counsel of their fears, 
the rancheros consulted with Fremont, who prom- 
ised to protect them if attacked, and advised them 
to forestall aggression by assuming the offensive on 
their own account. Thus assured of armed sup- 
port, a band of settlers sallied forth one afternoon 
from the explorer's camp, and at sunrise of June 10 
surprised a company of Californians in charge of a 
number of horses intended for Castro's troops. 
Seizing the horses, but letting their escort depart 
unharmed, the settlers hurriedly returned to advise 
with Fremont as to their next step. 

Events now moved rapidly. It seemed certain 
that, whatever his earlier purposes, Castro would 
take the field against the budding revolutionists, and 
self-defense required action which would render it 
difficult for him to secure a foothold north of San 
Francisco Bay. Accordingly, while Fremont and 
his followers — many of whom begged permission 
to join openly in the movement — remained in camp, 
a tiny but stout-hearted army of thirty-three settlers 
crossed the Sacramento and by forced marches 
reached the town of Sonoma just before dawn of 
June 14. No garrison was in the place, the inhabi- 



152 ROMANCE OF AMERICAN EXPANSION 

tants were asleep, and it fell without a shot. Making 
prisoners of the military commandant and two other 
officers, and locking the citizens in their houses, the 
Americans promptly proceeded to take possession, 
hauling down the Mexican flag and substituting in 
its stead an improvised standard bearing a crude 
representation of a grizzly bear. On the whole, 
order was well maintained. There was considerable 
drinking, and some private property was taken. 
But there was nothing like systematic looting, and 
the Californians were in no way molested, being soon 
released and permitted to follow their ordinary 
occupations. 

The ease with which success was gained and the 
braggart language used by some of the leaders have 
led certain historians to belittle the ^'Bear Flag" 
revolt, as it is known, and to refer in contemptuous 
terms to those who participated in it. Yet it was in 
reality a singularly bold and venturesome enterprise, 
carried through with a dash and a vim that compel 
admiration notwithstanding the feebleness of the 
opposition actually encountered. That the opposi- 
tion was feeble was due not to the cowardice of the 
Californians as a race — at San Pascual they showed 
well enough that they would fight — but to the 
incapacity, and worse, of their commanders, and 



JOHN CHARLES FREMONT 153 

in especial of their Commander-in-Chief, General 
Castro. At the first news of the rising, Castro had 
fallen into a fine frenzy and had declared his intention 
of subduing the revolutionists with a ruthless hand. 
But, in place of immediately marching against them, 
he lingered for some days to observe the time-honored 
custom of issuing martial and patriotic proclama- 
tions. And when he laid aside the pen in favor of 
the sword, he led his forces not northward to Sonoma 
but southward to San Juan, whence he sent frantic 
appeals to Governor Pico to forget past animosities 
and join with him in crushing the army of thirty- 
three — now, to be sure, somewhat augmented by 
reinforcements from outlying ranches of the Sacra- 
mento. His one really warlike move was to send a 
detachment across San Francisco Bay under the 
command of a Colonel Torre, who, June 23, came 
into contact with a force of revolutionists and after a 
single exchange of volleys retreated with a loss of 
two men killed and several wounded. Two days 
later Fremont, aroused by the news of Torre's com- 
ing, was at Sonoma with his plainsmicn, and hence- 
forth was openly in charge of the revolution ; winning 
no immediate renown, however, other than that 
arising from his capture of an abandoned fort on the 
site of the present San Francisco, and from an 



154 ROMANCE OF AMERICAN EXPANSION 

unsuccessful pursuit of Torre, who made good his 
escape to the southern side of the bay. 

Meantime Commodore Sloat, cruising off the 
coast with his squadron, was painfully pondering 
the problem whether or not to obey orders and seize 
the California ports. News of the first collision 
between American and Mexican troops had reached 
him as early as May 17, but, despite the urgings of 
his subordinate officers, he could not, such was his 
extreme caution, bring himself to adopt the course 
mapped out at Washington. Finally, July 2, he 
sailed into Monterey Harbor, followed shortly after- 
wards by a British fleet under the command of 
Admiral Sir George F\ Seymour, who had been 
watching his movements, not, probably, with a view 
to checkmate him in California, but to be ready for 
instant action in case the Oregon controversy should 
result in war between the United States and Great 
Britain. At Monterey Sloat heard for the first time 
of Fremont's operations in the north, and not un- 
naturally leaped to the conclusion that the explorer 
was acting under specific orders. Thus encouraged, 
though still somewhat fearful for the consequences, 
he seized Monterey July 7, without meeting any 
opposition — Castro fleeing further south so soon 
as the tidings were brought him — and sent word to 



JOHN CHARLES FREMONT 155 

Fremont to join him immediately. Fremont by that 
time had left Sonoma — where the Bear flag now 
gave place to the Stars and Stripes — and was back 
at his camp in the Sacramento Valley. But he lost 
not a moment in starting for Monterey with his 
command and a number of the whilom revolution- 
ists. The impression the party made as they swept 
into the quiet streets of the quaint old California 
seaport has been well described in a passage which 
deserves quotation for the vivid view it affords of the 
men who were the backbone of the conquest. It is 
taken from Frederick Walpole's "Four Years in the 
Pacific," a work by a British naval officer who was 
with Seymour at Monterey. 

"x\ vast cloud of dust appeared first," writes Wal- 
pole, "and thence in long file emerged this wildest 
wild party. Fremont rode ahead — a spare, active- 
looking man, with such an eye! He was dressed in a 
blouse and leggings, and wore a felt hat. After him 
came five Delaware Indians, who were his body- 
guard, and have been with him through all his 
wanderings; they had charge of the baggage horses. 
The rest, many of them blacker than the Indians, 
rode two and two, the rifle held by one hand across 
the pommel of the saddle. Thirty-nine of them are 
his regular men, the rest are loafers picked up lately; 



iS6 ROMANCE OF AMERICAN EXPANSION 

his original men are principally backwoodsmen from 
the State of Tennessee and the banks of the upper 
waters of the Missouri. . . . The dress of these men 
was principally a long, loose coat of deerskin, tied 
with thongs in front; trousers of the same, of their 
own manufacture, which, when wet through, they 
take off, scrape v/ell inside with a knife, and put on 
as soon as dry; the saddles were of various fashions, 
though these and a large drove of horses, and a 
brass field-gun, were things they had picked up 
about California. They are allowed no liquor, tea 
and sugar only; this, no doubt, has much to do with 
their good conduct; and the discipline, too, is very 
strict.'' 

Good fighting material, this, and commanded by a 
man who well knew its worth and was eager to 
utilize it. But to Fremont's request that Sloat 
enlist his ''Bear Flag Battalion" as part of the 
United States forces for the completion of the con- 
quest, the Commodore returned a wrathful refusal. 
He had learned by now that Fremont's earlier 
actions had been based only on blanket instructions, 
were, it might be, contrary to instructions, and he 
bitterly reproached the explorer with having led him 
into an embarrassing situation. So great, in fact, 
was his confusion and anxiety that he sailed for 



JOHN CHARLES FREMONT 157 

home to explain matters, turning the squadron over 
to Commodore R. F. Stockton, who had chanced to 
arrive from Hawaii about the time Fremont made 
his dramatic entrance into Monterey. And in 
Stockton Fremont found both a friend and an 
ally who shared his views as to the necessity 
for energetic action. Constituting the '^ Bears" a 
volunteer battalion in the United States army, 
with Fremont at its head as major, and Gillespie 
assisting him as captain, Stockton decided on 
a campaign which had as chief objective the cap- 
ture of the Cahfornia capital, Los Angeles, where 
General Castro and Governor Pico had at last 
united forces. 

Sailing from Monterey July 26, Fremont and his 
men three days later reached San Diego, in the 
extreme south of California, raised the American 
flag, and, after leaving a garrison in the town, started 
to march north to Los Angeles, where they were to 
meet Stockton and join in a combined assault. 
Stockton, meanwhile, took a force of three hundred 
and sixty marines and sailors from Monterey to 
Santa Barbara, where the flag-raising formality was 
duly observed, and from Santa Barbara proceeded 
to San Pedro, a coastal town just south of Los 
Angeles. From San Pedro, after a few days spent 



158 ROMANCE OF AMERICAN EXPANSION 

in drilling the seamen in the rudiments of land war- 
fare, the advance to the capital was begun. 

Castro, unready as ever, let it be known at this 
juncture that he would like to negotiate with the 
invaders. To his dismay he found them in no 
mood for negotiation. For at least this once, there- 
fore, he reached a quick decision, sending to Governor 
Pico a long despatch in which he explained that he 
was about to disband his army and go to Mexico 
in order to report the situation to the central authori- 
ties. He should, he added, be pleased to have the 
Governor as a traveling companion on the long 
journey, an invitation which fell in so well with 
Pico's own desires that the unworthy pair were soon 
in full flight across the border. The California 
Legislative Assembly, then in session, likewise 
adjourned sine die, the members seeking safety by 
a hasty retreat. Without leaders and without troops, 
the people of Los Angeles had no alternative but to 
submit. 

August 13, at five o'clock in the afternoon, Fre- 
mont's and Stockton's combined forces entered the 
city with flags flying and drums beating. As always, 
they maintained excellent discipline, and this, to- 
gether with the encouraging strains of a brass band 
which gave a concert in the evening, reassured the 



JOHN CHARLES FREMONT 159 

citizens to a considerable extent. Some progress, 
though more apparent than real, in re-establishing 
friendly relations was also effected by a tour of con- 
ciliation which Fremont made through the sur- 
rounding country. By the practice of making 
prisoners and then releasing them on parole, it was 
hoped to secure further sureties for future peace; 
but it soon became evident that the installation of a 
garrison would be necessary, and for this work 
Stockton detailed Gillespie and fifty men. About 
the same time he appointed Fremont military com- 
mandant of all California, and then, September 5, 
sailed for Monterey with the greater part of the 
troops. Three days afterwards Fremont followed 
him to establish headquarters in the genial valley 
of the Sacramento. 

The conquest now seemed complete. But there 
were patriots among the Californians, and, freed 
from the deadening influence of Castro and Pico, a 
few bold souls began to concert measures to win 
back the province. Chief among these was a paroled 
officer named Flores, who, regardless of the fact that 
he had given his word not to take up arms against 
the United States, before long had a following suffi- 
ciently strong to enable him to lay a successful siege 
to Los Angeles and expel Gillespie, who was forced 



i6o ROMANCE OF AMERICAN EXPANSION 

to capitulate and retire to Monterey. A little later 
the Californians reoccupied Santa Barbara and San 
Diego, and, October 4, defeated a force which Stock- 
ton had sent against them. Then began a guerrilla 
warfare, as difficult for the Americans to repress as 
it was unprofitable for the Californians to pursue. 

Fremont, at the first intimation of the attack on 
Gillespie, had hastened to Monterey — where, by 
the way, he found awaiting him a commission as 
lieutenant-colonel in the United States army — and 
thence to Santa Barbara by water, intending to 
procure horses and gallop to Gillespie's relief. But 
no horses were to be had, and reluctantly he was 
compelled to return to Monterey, at which place the 
defeated Gillespie had in the meantime arrived. 
With the greatest energy Fremont now began to 
raise an army, and early in November was at the 
head of a motley — but, for the work in hand, ex- 
ceedingly effective — force of five hundred plains- 
men, settlers, recently arrived immigrants, and native 
Indians. With these he took the field, ridding 
North California of the enemy, and starting south 
to join Stockton, who was operating about the 
capital. 

It was during this march that an incident occurred 
of which his biographers have deservedly made 



JOHN CHARLES FREMONT i6i 

much. Jesus Pico, a brother of the fugitive gov- 
ernor, had joined the insurrectionists in violation of 
his parole, and on being captured was tried by a 
court martial and sentenced to death. This sen- 
tence Fremont approved; but, an hour before the 
time set for the execution, moved by the prayers and 
lamentations of Pico's wife and children, he granted 
the condemned a full pardon. Pico (if we are at 
liberty to accept the traditional account) ''flung 
himself with unrestrained emotion, before Colonel 
Fremont, clasped his knees, swore eternal fidelity, 
and begged the privilege of fighting and dying for 
him." * This may be putting the case over-strongly ; 
but there is no doubt that henceforth Pico and Pico's 
friends were sincerely attached to Fremont, and that 
by many other, if less sensational, acts of clemency 
and kindness Fremont did much to gain for his 
countrymen the confidence and good-will of the 
beaten Calif ornians. 

As yet, however, the Californians had still to ac- 
knowledge defeat, and Fremont's efforts were chiefly 
directed to their subjugation. But so elusive were 
they that he could never close with them in anything 
like a regular engagement. That fortune was 

* C. W. Upham's "The Life, Explorations, and Public Services of 
John Charles Fremont," p. 248. 



i62 ROMANCE OF AMERICAN EXPANSION 

reserved for another American commander, with 
results by no means redounding to the prestige of 
American arms. General Stephen W. Kearny, the 
reader will recall, had occupied New Mexico in 
August, and had set out on the long overland journey 
to California with the intention of similarly occupy- 
ing that province, the conquest of which by Stockton 
and Fremont was quite unknown to him. Early in 
October he met a messenger * hurrying from Cali- 
fornia to Washington with a report of the conquest, 
and on being told that the Californians had sub- 
mitted without the slightest resistance, and were a 
race of cowards, he sent most of his force back to 
Santa Fe, continuing his journey with only one 
hundred dragoons. Nothing untoward occurred 
until the long and dreary march was almost at its 
end, when Kearny found his progress blocked by a 
numerous, active, and most troublesome foe. 

While debating the best course to pursue, he was 
joined by Gillespie and forty men, sent by Stockton 
to reinforce him; and it was then decided to attack 
the Californians, who had taken up a strong position 
in the mountain village of San Pascual. Badly 
planned, and fought by travel-exhausted men, it 

* The messenger was no other than the celebrated Western guide and 
scout, Kit Carson, who had been associated with Fremont in all of his 
explorations, and to whom in no small measure their success was due. 



JOHN CHARLES FREMONT 163 

would be charitable to Kearny to describe the re- 
sultant engagement as a drawn battle. He lost 
seventeen killed and eighteen wounded, the enemy 
withdrew and continued to harass him, and he was 
soon in a most dangerous situation, from which he 
was extricated only by the timely arrival of another 
body of troops from Stockton. Thus reinforced, 
he pushed painfully on, uniting with Stockton at 
San Diego late in December, and before the end of 
the month advancing with him against Los Angeles, 
which was still in the hands of the Calif ornians. 

All this time Fremont and his five hundred volun- 
teers were approaching the same city from the north, 
encountering no opposition, but suffering terribly 
from cold and storms. Christmas Day they crossed 
the Santa Inez mountains in a blizzard, reaching 
Santa Barbara a couple of days afterwards, and 
early in the new year resuming their march to Los 
Angeles. But before they arrived there they were 
met by two Californians who told them that Stockton 
and Kearny, after a skirmish on the banks of the 
San Gabriel River, had entered the capital in tri- 
umph ; and the next day two of the insurgent leaders 
came into Fremont's camp to treat for peace. Terms 
of capitulation were speedily arranged, Fremont, 
with a generosity as politic as it was conspicuous. 



i64 ROMANCE OF AMERICAN EXPANSION 

overlooking the broken paroles and extending a 
general amnesty. This marked the end of the war, 
and the definite establishment of American authority 
in California. With its unpleasant sequel, the 
quarrel between Kearny and Stockton over the 
question of whom should exercise supreme authority, 
and the court-martialing of Fremont on charges of 
disobedience preferred by Kearny, we need not 
concern ourselves. 

But it is important, in closing, to make clear the 
territorial consequences of the conquest and of the 
success of American arms in Mexico. There, owing 
to the desperate valor of the Mexicans, the struggle 
lasted until the fall of 1847, and it was not until 
February, 1848, that a treaty of peace was actually 
signed. By its provisions the United States gained 
all that Polk had determined upon, and Mexico 
only a fraction of the pecuniary compensation pre- 
viously offered — fifteen million dollars, and the 
assumption by the United States of the unpaid 
claims, in exchange for the vast area out of which 
have since been created the States of California, 
Nevada, and Utah, and parts of Arizona, New 
Mexico, and Colorado. Five years later, however, 
another ten millions were paid for a further read- 
justment of the boundary, adding a scant forty-five 



JOHN CHARLES FREMONT 165 

thousand square miles to the territory of the United 
States in southern Arizona. The Gadsden Pur- 
chase, as this is known, marked the last step in the 
American advance, so far as related to territory 
adjacent to the Republic. 



CHAPTER VII 

WILLIAM HENRY SEWARD AND THE ALASKA CESSION 

In studying the territorial growth of the United 
States, it may not be amiss to remind the reader, 
the most conspicuous fact hitherto encountered has 
been the inevitabihty of the different acquisitions. 
The first migratory movement — the movement 
across the Alleghanies, following necessarily from 
economic stress and the genesis of a bold, enterpris- 
ing, and restless people — was certain soon or late 
to give rise to a struggle for mastery of the Mississippi, 
the great mid-continent waterway. In good season 
a peaceful solution for the problem thus created was 
found in the Louisiana Purchase, transferring from 
the French to the American nation not only the 
Mississippi but also the enormous area to the west- 
ward watered by the Mississippi and its affluents. 
Then, and equally of necessity, was presented the 
question of acquiring the one piece of territory to the 
east of the Mississippi still held by alien hands, 
and constituting a serious menace to the welfare of 

the United States. This, again, was happily settled 

166 



WILLIAM HENRY SEWARD 167 

by the Florida Purchase, though only after the use 
of intimidative methods, amply justified, however, 
by the principle of self-defense and self-preservation. 
Texas came next, an acquisition not in itself 
necessarily inevitable, but rendered so by the stu- 
pendous folly of the Mexican authorities in permit- 
ting the colonization of that outlying and practically 
unoccupied province by the representatives of an 
adjacent nation stronger than theirs and differing 
from theirs in race, institutions, and points of view. 
When the inevitable conflict arose, the national 
instinct for expansion was, as has been shown, 
powerfully reinforced by a sectional desire, and 
Texas, though not without a severe struggle, became 
a part of the American Republic. Meantime, and 
likewise under the secondary stimulus of sectional 
interests, agitation had begun looking to anticipa- 
tion of the inevitable by carrying the westward 
movement still further forward — across the Rocky 
Mountains and down to the shores of the Pacific. 
As yet the nation had not fully entered into its own, 
and vast expanses of internal territory were still to 
be occupied before a second transmontane migration 
would become necessary; but there were certain 
impatient souls who, rightly enough, urged that 
action should not wait on necessity. The outcome 



i68 ROMANCE OF AMERICAN EXPANSION 

of tlieir urging was, on the one hand, the occupation 
of Oregon, to which the United States was rightfully 
entitled, and, on the other, the seizure of California, 
to which she had no title at all, but which in the 
course of time, given a continuance of the conditions 
then existing in that remote section of Mexico, 
would almost certainly have accrued to her by force 
of '' silent immigration." In any event, the acquisi- 
tion of California speedily became an established 
fact, and with it the ^^ manifest destiny" of the Ameri- 
can people to pass from sea to sea, and to assume 
headship in the western hemisphere, found fulfil- 
ment. 

Nor, with the instinct for expansion thus strength- 
ened and quickened by the unparalleled success 
and rapidity of the transcontinental movement, was 
it reasonable to expect that no further effort would 
be made to extend the dominions of the United 
States. On the contrary, everything pointed to 
such additional effort; with this difference, that 
while it had hitherto been comparatively easy to 
map out in advance the successive steps taken, it 
was impossible longer to predict in just what quarter 
future acquisitions would be found. That, clearly, 
would depend altogether upon new needs and wisely 
grasped opportunities, the element of inevitability 



WILLIAM HENRY SEWARD 169 

remaining only so far as concerned the certainty 
that the nation would not rest content with what 
had already been obtained. There were, of course, 
those who essayed the prophet's role, variously 
indicating Mexico, the W^est Indies, Canada, and 
even mid-Pacific and trans-Pacific territories as the 
next to be absorbed in the growth of the United 
States. But few were prepared for what actually 
occurred — the acquisition by purchase of the region 
in the extreme northwest known as Russian America. 
Remote, difficult of access, and generally believed 
to be worthless and uninhabitable, this was regarded 
by most Americans of the time as the least desirable 
of all possible territorial additions. Yet, thanks to 
the foresight, energy, and enthusiasm of a true 
statesman, William Henry Seward, it was the first 
to follow the Mexican Cession and the Gadsden 
Purchase. 

Seward, for his part, occupies a unique place in 
the story of American expansion. The acquisition 
of Russian America is more directly attributable to 
him than is any other acquisition to the moving 
spirit most closely associated with it. And, unlike 
the others in our gallery, he was not born and brought 
up in an atmosphere peculiarly favorable to the 
development of expansionistic sentiments, but was, 



I70 ROMANCE OF AMERICAN EXPANSION 

on the contrary, distinctly a self-made expansionist. 
His early years were spent on a farm in New York 
State, where he enjoyed few educational or other 
broadening advantages; and thereafter, until well 
past the age of forty, his interests were essentially 
State interests, although the eminence he rapidly 
attained in the councils of the Whig party, which 
he joined on its formation in 1832, inevitably widened 
his outlook. When, however, he began seriously 
to consider the future of the United States as a 
territorial as well as a political entity, the heritage 
of a naturally exuberant imagination, together with 
the influence of the teachings of his first political 
idol, John Quincy Adams, made itself felt and 
he promptly ranged himself among the adherents 
of the Jefferson-Adams- Jackson-Benton school of 
aggrandizement. On only one important point did 
he differ from them — stoutly opposing territorial 
growth by the aid of military conquest. "T want no 
enlargement of territory," he once wrote, ''sooner 
than it would come if we were content with a masterly 
inactivity. I abhor war, as I detest slavery. I 
would not give one human life for all the continent 
that remains to be annexed."* 

* George E. Baker's edition of "The Works of William H. Seward," 
vol. Ill, p. 409. 




William Henry Seward 
From a photograph loaned by his son, Frederick W. Seward. 



WILLIAM HENRY SEWARD 171 

With this reservation, not one among the many 
apostles of the doctrine of ^'manifest destiny/' 
whose voices v^ere so loudly raised in the years 
immediately preceding the acquisition of Texas, 
Oregon, and California, surpassed Seward in preach- 
ing territorial expansion. With Jefferson, he 
''viewed the Confederacy as the nest from which 
all America, North and South, is to be peopled." 
With Benton, he beheld the American people con- 
tinuing their westward movement until they had 
fairly established themselves on the Asiatic shores 
of the Pacific. At one time, in imagination, he 
located the ''ultimate capital," of the United States 
in the ''valley of Mexico," where "the glories of the 
Aztec capital would be renewed." And even when 
he "corrected this view," possibly from a growing 
distrust of the advantages to be gained from absorp- 
tion of the restless and unruly Latin-American 
republics, Seward still placed the "future and ulti- 
mate central seat of power" in such a quarter — 
"at the head of navigation on the Mississippi River 
and on the great Mediterranean lakes" — as to 
indicate his belief that the Stars and Stripes would 
one day wave over the entire continent from the 
frozen Arctic to the tropical Caribbean.* 

* Baker's Edition, vol. IV, pp. 331-32. 



172 ROMANCE OF AMERICAN EXPANSION 

Nor did he exhaust his expansionistic sentiments 
in flamboyant generaHties and high-sounding pre- 
dictions. To the best of his abihty, and perhaps 
more earnestly than any other builder of the pro- 
spective American Empire, he toiled to make his 
dreams come true. When he was first in a position 
to turn his energies in this direction — with his 
election to the United States Senate in 1849 — the 
growing contest over slavery claimed and held his 
attention, to continue uppermost in his heart and 
mind until Appomattox brought it to its dramatic 
close. Then, as Secretary of State under President 
Johnson, he hastened to promote his darling project 
of creating a greater America than even that which 
had been born of the irresistible sweep to the Pacific. 
All over the world he cast his eye, seeking here and 
seeking there for territory which the United Sattes 
might advantageously possess. 

He had all the fire, one might almost say the 
recklessness, of the true enthusiast. Besides Russian 
America, the concrete additions which he endeavored 
to make included Hawaii, Cuba, Hayti, San Do- 
mingo, and the Danish West Indian Islands of St. 
John and St. Thomas. It was even reported that 
he had it in mind to annex a part of China ; and that 
this rumor did not altogether do him injustice is evi- 



WILLIAM HENRY SEWARD 173 

dent from a letter he wrote to Cassius M. Clay. 
"Russia and the United States/' he warned Clay, 
"may remain good friends until, each having made 
a circuit of half the globe in opposite directions, they 
shall meet and greet each other in regions where 
civilization first began, and where, after so many 
ages, it has become now lethargic and helpless."* 
With respect to the Danish islands he actually 
succeeded in negotiating a treaty of cession, but 
this failed of ratification in the United States 
Senate, chiefly owing to Congressional animosity 
to the Johnson administration. The same influence 
played a part in paralyzing his other efforts, and to 
such an extent that, for afl his ambition and high 
hopes, when he stepped out of office he could boast 
of but one territorial achievement — and that an 
achievement held in scorn and derision by the vast 
majority of his fellow-countrymen. To-day, time 
having proved that Seward was right and the nation 
wrong, it stands as an enduring monument to his 
fame. 

He did not, however, originate the idea of acquir- 
ing Alaska. That was broached as early as the 
Oregon debates of 1846, with the suggestion that, 
by insisting on possession of the whole of Oregon, 

* F. Bancroft's "Life of William H. Seward," vol. II, p. 472. 



174 ROMANCE OF AMERICAN EXPANSION 

and persuading Russia to sell her territory in the 
north, the United States would secure an unbroken 
coast-line from the Arctic to California. Tradition 
has it that the Russian Government was at that 
time approached on the subject. Certainly a few 
years later a definite offer of five million dollars was 
made in an informal way by Senator Gwin, of Cali- 
fornia. Gwin's proposal elicited the interesting 
information that, while the Czar's Government 
deemed the sum named too low for consideration, 
it would be willing to open negotiations so soon as 
the Russian Minister of Finance could look into the 
question. But nothing was done at the time, and, 
the Civil War soon following, the fact that tentative 
steps had been taken was quite forgotten until 
chance directed Seward's attention to Alaska in 
1866. 

For years there had been friction between Russian 
and American traders and fishermen, owing to the 
monopoly exercised by the Russian Fur Company 
over the v/aters as well as the lands of the North 
Pacific. This company was organized in 1799 as a 
means of developing and exploiting the colonial 
territories which Russia had acquired in America 
by virtue of Bering's discoveries in 1741 and subse- 
quent exploration, occupation, and conquest. Be- 



WILLIAM HENRY SEWARD 175 

sides full commercial privileges, the Russian Govern- 
ment granted it such extensive administrative rights 
that it enjoyed practically sovereign authority within 
the sphere of its operations, a power which it wielded 
with extreme cruelty to the native inhabitants and 
singular harshness and arrogance to the representa- 
tives of other civilized nations. Tempted, never- 
theless, by the hope of winning golden profit, foreign 
merchantmen made their way to Russian America 
in increasing numbers, and before many years cap- 
tured a goodly portion of the fur trade which the 
company was seeking to monopolize. Vigorous 
protests to St. Petersburg followed, and in 182 1 the 
Czar issued a ukase in which, after claiming for 
Russia all of the American coast from Bering 
Straits to the fifty-first parallel, he declared that ''it 
is therefore prohibited to all foreign vessels not only 
to land on the coasts and islands belonging to Russia 
as stated above, but also to approach them within 
less than one hundred Italian miles.'' At once the 
United States and Great Britain took umbrage at 
this assumption of ownership to a region to which 
they themselves had pretensions, and still more at 
the trading prohibition. Negotiations were begun 
on the basis of a territorial adjustment, and ulti- 
mately, by treaties concluded with the United States 



176 ROMANCE OF AMERICAN EXPANSION 

in 1824 and Great Britain in 1825, Russia agreed to 
content herself with the coastal country north of 
latitude fifty-four degrees, forty minutes; and to 
modify the obnoxious restriction in trade. 

This modification, as affected the United States, 
consisted in opening Alaskan waters and ports to 
American vessels for a period of ten years ''for the 
purpose of fishing and trading with the natives of 
the country.'' Unfortunately, unscrupulous traders 
so abused the privilege by selling liquor and fire- 
arms to the natives, in defiance of the Russian regu- 
lations, that at the termination of the ten-year period 
it was not renewed. Some diplomatic correspond- 
ence followed, but in the end the United States 
Government submitted, and in 1837 officially warned 
American skippers to keep away from Alaska. 
With the passage of time and the settlement and 
steady growth of Oregon and California the limita- 
tion thus imposed upon American commerce came 
to be more and more keenly felt. But no measures 
were taken to remedy the situation until, in 1866, 
the Legislature of Washington Territory adopted 
a memorial to President Johnson, in which, after 
stating that ''abundance of codfish, halibut, and 
salmon of excellent quality have been found along the 
shores of the Russian possessions," they begged the 



WILLIAM HENRY SEWARD 177 

President ''to obtain such rights and privileges of 
the Government of Russia as will enable our fishing 
vessels to visit the ports and harbors of its posses- 
sions.'' 

In due course this memorial came to Secretary of 
State Seward for action; and about the same time 
he learned that a number of Californians had organ- 
ized a fur-trading company in the hope of persuading 
the Russian Government to renew to them the 
privileges of the Russian Fur Company, whose 
charter had expired. Forthwith a brilliant prospect 
unfolded before Seward's boundless imagination. 
Russia, he was well aware, was beginning to consider 
her American holdings a source of embarrassment 
rather than of profit. Mismanagement and the suc- 
cessful competition of the Hudson's Bay Company, 
which had literally forced a large territorial lease in 
Russian America as compensation for damages in- 
flicted in violation of the Treaty of 1825, had wrecked 
the Russian Fur Company. Instead of yielding a 
handsome revenue, the settlements now showed an 
annual deficit. Moreover, they were remote and 
difficult to defend — so weak, in fact, that they were 
certain to fall at the first attack. That attack, in 
all probability, would come from Great Britain, 
Russia's deadliest foe. On the other hand, it would 



178 ROMANCE OF AMERICAN EXPANSION 

be to the interest of the United States to forestall 
any attempt by Great Britain thus to extend her 
coast line on the Pacific. Besides which, Alaska 
was unquestionably a country of great possibilities, 
from both a military and an economic standpoint. 
If Russia wished or could be induced to sell, there 
was, in Seward's opinion, every reason why the 
United States should buy. And rumor afterwards 
credited him with further believing the purchase 
might be made the occasion of rallying the nation 
to the support of the discredited Johnson adminis- 
tration. 

Confiding his plans and hopes to no one, he went 
to work. His first step was to call the attention of 
the Russian Minister, Edward de Stoeckel, to the 
Washington memorial, and to urge upon de 
Stoeckel the desirability of effecting a comprehen- 
sive arrangement between Russia and the United 
States to prevent difficulties arising on account of 
the Alaska fisheries. He then instructed Cassius M. 
Clay, the American Minister at St. Petersburg, to 
take up with the Russian Chancellor, the great 
Gortchakoff, the question of granting a franchise to 
the projected California Fur Company. This Clay 
did, and reported to Seward that the Russian Govern- 
ment seemed to think favorably of his proposal. 



WILLIAM HENRY SEWARD 179 

"The Russian Government," he similarly wrote to 
a promoter of the CaHfornia organization, ''has 
already ceded away its rights in Russian America for 
a term of years, and the Russo-American Company 
has also ceded the same to the Hudson's Bay Com- 
pany. This lease expires in June next, and the 
President of the Russo-American Company tells me 
that they have been in correspondence with the 
Hudson's Bay Company about a renewal of the 
lease for another term of twenty-five or thirty years. 
Until he receives a definite answer he cannot enter 
into negotiations with us or your California com- 
pany. My opinion is that if he can get off with the 
Hudson's Bay Company he will do so, when we can 
make some arrangement with the Russo-American 
Company." * 

Meantime, de Stoeckel had returned to St. Peters- 
burg on leave of absence, and the attitude of his 
superiors soon underwent a complete change. 
Whether this was a result of representations made 
by Seward to de Stoeckel before his departure it is 
impossible to say, the veil of secrecy in which the 
negotiations were conducted not having been entirely 
lifted to the present day. In any event, the eager 
Secretary of State was informed that Russia had no 

* "The Works of Charles Sumner," vol. XI, p. 20S. 



i8o ROMANCE OF AMERICAN EXPANSION 

inclination to make temporary and minor arrange- 
ments of the nature proposed, but would willingly 
enter into negotiations looking to a sale of her 
American possessions. The story is told that, on 
the very night de Stoeckel was leaving St. Petersburg 
to resume his official duties in Washington, he was 
abruptly accosted by the Archduke Constantine, the 
Czar's brother and chief adviser, and given permis- 
sion to negotiate a treaty of cession. 

Arriving at Washington early in March, 1867, the 
preliminaries were quickly arranged. Seward's first 
offer of five million dollars was met by a counter- 
demand for ten millions, de Stoeckel finally agreeing 
to accept seven. Then a slight hitch arose on the 
question of the rights and privileges still held by the 
Russian Fur Company and the Hudson's Bay Com- 
pany, Seward insisting that the territory must be 
delivered to the United States free of all encum- 
brances, and offering to pay in addition two hundred 
thousand dollars if this demand were met. De 
Stoeckel consenting, the terms of the proposed treaty 
were telegraphed to St. Petersburg via the Altantic 
cable, which had been put into successful operation 
only the year before. Anxiously Seward awaited 
the response, fearful lest it should come too late to 
permit of action by Congress, which had assembled 



WILLIAM HENRY SEWARD i8i 

in extra session to insure execution by President 
Johnson of the reconstruction bill recently passed 
over his veto. But the Secretary's anxiety was short- 
lived. Before the end of March the desired per- 
mission had been received. 

Then Seward acted with a promptitude unparalleled 
in the annals of diplomacy. He was at home, play- 
ing whist with his family, when de Stoeckel, on the 
evening of March 29, called to inform him that the 
imperial consent had been given. *^If you like, Mr. 
Seward," said he, "I will come to the department 
to-morrow, and we can draw up the treaty." ''Ah," 
responded Seward, pushing back his chair from the 
whist table, 'Svhy wait until to-morrow, Mr. de 
Stoeckel ? Let us make the treaty to-night." To de 
StoeckePs objection that the State Department was 
closed and that his owti secretaries were scattered 
about Washington, Seward insistently replied: "If 
you can muster your legation before midnight, you 
will find me at the department, which will be open 
and ready for business." Carried away by Seward's 
enthusiasm, de Stoeckel gasped acquiescence, and 
soon messengers were hurrying in all directions to 
summon department and legation officials. At four 
o'clock on the morning of March 30, after unremit- 
ting toil throughout the night, the treaty transferring 



i82 ROMANCE OF AMERICAN EXPANSION 

Alaska from Russia to the United States was en- 
grossed, signed, sealed, and ready for transmission 
to the Senate * 

There its sponsor was to be Charles Sumner, 
Chairman of the Committee on Foreign Relations. 
Even from Sumner Seward had kept the secret of 
his negotiations until de Stoeckel brought him the 
welcome news from St. Petersburg, and the Massa- 
chusetts Senator's amazement on learning of the f 
treaty may be better imagined than described. He 
promised, none the less, to use all his influence to 
secure its ratification, though by no means in favor 
of it himself. ''The Russian treaty," he wrote to a 
friend a few days later, "tried me severely; ab- 
stractly I am against further accessions of territory 
unless by the free choice of the inhabitants. But 
this question was perplexed by considerations of 
politics and comity and the engagements already 
entered into by the Government. I hesitated to 
take the responsibility of defeating it."f Others 
were outspoken in their hostility to the treaty and in 
denunciation of Seward for having arranged it. In 
fact, a flood of criticism rolled towards Washington 

* This account is based on the intimate narrative given by F. W. 
Seward in his "Seward at Washington," vol. II, pp. 348-49. 

t Sumner to John Bright, in E. L. Pierce's "Memoir and Letters of 
Charles Sumner," vol. IV, pp. 318-19. 




v. o 



WILLIAM HENRY SEWARD 183 

from almost every section of the country, and espe- 
cially from the States of the East and Middle West. 
Russian America was declared to be a "barren, 
worthless, God-forsaken region," whose only pro- 
ducts were "icebergs and polar bears." Its streams 
were "glaciers," its ground was "frozen six feet 
deep," for vegetation it had nothing but "mosses." 
Some one, with cheap sarcasm, suggested that it be 
called "W^alrussia," and there were many who 
thought that "Seward's Folly" was the only fitting 
designation for it. All of which had no effect what- 
ever on the imperturbable Secretary of State, who 
amused himself and his friends by reading from old 
newspapers the similar comment passed in former 
times on Jefferson's purchase of the "desert waste" 
of Louisiana, and the later acquisition of the 
"noxious swamps" of "snake-infested" Florida. 

What did disturb him was the thought that the 
Senate, influenced by the treaty's evident unpopu- 
larity among the nation at large, might reject it. 
But in the chairman of the Committee on Foreign 
Relations he had an all-powerful ally. Whatever 
his private opinions, Sumner for the time being kept 
them rigidly to himself, and while the treaty was 
being considered in committee, labored diligently in 
the preparation of a speech which should insure 



i84 ROMANCE OF AMERICAN EXPANSION 

ratification by an overwhelming vote. This speech, 
afterwards elaborated and published as a mono- 
graph on the resources and possibilities of Alaska * 
he delivered April 9 to an audience that followed his 
every word with the greatest interest. He began 
by hinting at the reasons which had induced Russia 
to part with her holdings, and reminded his hearers 
of the motives impelling Napoleon to cede Louisiana. 
*' Perhaps," he suggested, a ^'similar record may be 
made hereafter with regard to the present cession. 
... All must see that in those ^coming events' 
which now, more than ever, ^cast their shadows 
before,' it will be for her advantage not to liold out- 
lying possessions for which, thus far, she has obtained 
no income commensurate with the possible expense 
for their protection. ... In ceding possessions so 
little within the sphere of her empire, embracing 
more than one hundred nations or tribes, Russia 
gives up no part of herself. And even if she did, 
the considerable price paid, the alarm of war which 
begins to fill our ears, and the sentiments of friend- 
ship declared for the United States, would explain 
the transaction." Turning to the reasons why the 
United States should accept the cession, he sum- 

*The student will find it printed in full in "The Works of Charles 
Sumner," vol. XI, pp. 181-349. 



WILLIAM HENRY SEWARD 185 

marized in vivid outline all the information he had 
been able to obtain concerning the timber, minerals, 
furs, fisheries, physical features, climate, and in- 
habitants of Alaska, drawing a picture in sharp con- 
trast with that of the "iceberg and polar bear^' 
critics. It was an unanswerable argument, silen- 
cing all opposition so far as the Senate was concerned, 
and that same day the necessary "advice and con- 
sent" to ratification was given by the impressive 
vote of thirty-seven to two, Fessenden and Morrill 
of Vermont alone voting in the negative. 

Danger now threatened, however, from the House 
of Representatives, where certain members, jealous 
of their rights, asserted that the President and the 
Senate were in duty bound to consult the House 
with reference to a treaty involving the payment of 
money — this view finding its justification in the 
fact that appropriation bills had to originate in the 
House. For more than a year, and until long after 
the United States had taken possession of its new 
Territory, the necessary bill appropriating the seven 
million two hundred thousand dollars called for by 
the treaty was not passed, and in passing it the 
House took occasion to assert its right to consider 
the stipulations of a treaty of this kind before it 
could go into effect. Incidentally the debate revealed 



i86 ROMANCE OF AMERICAN EXPANSION 

the continuance of a widespread hostility to the 
cession. "The country," declared Washburn, of 
Wisconsin, the leader in the attack, "is absolutely 
without value," and he condemned the treaty acquir- 
ing it as "an outrage on the rights of the American 
people." 

But Seward still rejoiced in his achievement, and 
died accounting it among his most meritorious 
efforts. To the present generation, well aware of 
the riches that have since been discovered in the 
supposedly icy wastes of Alaska — the name of 
which, by the way, was selected by Seward himself 
— there cannot be the slightest doubt that he had 
indeed labored wisely and well for his country. 



CHAPTER VIII 
WILLIAM Mckinley and the transmarine 

POSSESSIONS 

After the acquisition of Alaska in 1867 niore than 

thirty years passed before the United States made 

another territorial addition. But in the interval 

there were many indications that the expansionistic 

impulse was still active. Attempts were made to 

purchase Denmark^s possessions in the West Indies; 

the annexation of San Domingo was vigorously 

urged, particularly by President Grant; there was 

much talk of bringing Cuba into the American fold; 

and, finally, the idea of securing a foothold in the 

mid-Pacific by annexing the Hawaiian Islands found 

wide favor. For one reason or another all of these 

projects failed, saving only the annexation of Hawaii. 

And the accomplishment of this, although it could 

hardly have been delayed much longer, must be 

credited, not to any premeditated design, but to 

an unforeseen event that brought about the 

acquisition, not of Hawaii alone, but of new lands 

far more extensive and valuable than Hawaii. 

187 



i88 ROMANCE OF AMERICAN EXPANSION 

This event was the unexpected outbreak of a war 
with Spain — a war waged not in any spirit of con- 
quest or spoliation, but in the great cause of hu- 
manity. The seeds of the conflict were sown in 
the autumn of 1896, when in order to crush a rebel- 
lion that had begun in the island colony of Cuba the 
preceding year, the Spanish commanding general 
put into effect a so-called reconcentration policy. 
He had discovered that the great majority of the 
Cuban peasantry sympathized with and gave aid 
to the rebels. So, in order to cut off this source 
of assistance, he ordered the soldiery to compel 
the people to abandon their homes and move to 
the vicinity of the fortified towns. Here, under the 
watchful eye of brutal guards, they were penned up 
like cattle. Crowded together in noisome quarters, 
poorly clothed, lacking good food, and forced to 
drink impure water, these unfortunates died by the 
thousand. At the spectacle a cry of horror and 
wrath went up from the whole civilized world. 

In especial, the people and Government of the 
United States voiced the universal indignation, 
President Cleveland sounding a warning note to 
Spain in the course of his last Message to Congress. 
But diplomatic hints and open protests alike went 
unheeded. No matter what the cost in human life 



WILLIAM Mckinley 189 

the Spanish Government was resolved to stamp out 
the rebeUion and re-estabhsh its authority. Soon 
the entire island, seat of vast and prosperous planta- 
tions, was transformed into a bleeding, desolate 
waste. And still, with incredible heroism, the rebels 
maintained themselves against a long succession of 
troops sent out from Spain. Again the United 
States remonstrated, sending a new Minister to 
Madrid with special instructions to emphasize the 
necessity of terminating the unendurable state of 
affairs in Cuba. The sole result was the recall of 
the barbaric commanding general and a modifica- 
tion of the reconcentration order. Fighting con- 
tinued as before, with all its attendant horrors. On 
the night of February 15, 1898, the climax was 
reached when the United States battleship Maine, 
while lying peacefully at anchor in Havana harbor, 
was blown to pieces with a loss of more than two 
hundred and sixty officers and men. 

At once, from Maine to California, the length and 
breadth of the land, rose a demand for vengeance, 
a cry for war, instant war. But there were those 
who felt that Spain should yet be given a chance, 
that the responsibility for this appalhng catastrophe 
must be fixed before proceeding to extremities. 
And chief among the restraining influences that 



I90 ROMANCE OF AMERICAN EXPANSION 

imposed patience on the wrathful nation was its 
new President, WiUiam McKinley. He had already 
denounced Spain's Cuban policy in measured but 
forceful terms. He had urged upon the Spanish 
Government the importance of effecting a speedy 
and honorable peace with the Cubans. He had 
plainly intimated that, failing such a settlement, 
the United States, out of self-interest as well as for 
humanity's sake, would feel obliged to resort to 
armed intervention. But all the time he had been 
hopeful that war between the United States and 
Spain might yet be averted. And now that the 
crisis had been reached in this strange and terrible 
fashion, he was more than ever determined to give 
Spain opportunity to end her sanguinary dealings 
with her unhappy Cuban subjects. Cuba, not the 
Maine, must be the issue. If war came, it must be 
a righteous war, not a war of blind, unreasoning 
revenge. 

A fine, strong man, this McKinley — a man 
greatly misunderstood in his day, and only now 
beginning to be appreciated. The dominant figure 
in our study of the latest steps in the territorial 
growth of the United States, it will be well to fix 
him clearly in our mind's eye. A man of dignified, 
impressive, self-contained presence that added con- 




William ]McKixley 



WILLIAM Mckinley 191 

siderably to his five feet nine of physical stature, he 
looked at one frankly out of honest eyes. His very 
handshake bespoke his nature — warm, ardent, 
sincere. Yet he was not a man to be read at a glance. 
In private life full of humor, fond of a joke and 
a good story, his public demeanor was reserved, 
solemn, almost distant. He inspired in the multi- 
tude none of the enthusiasm that had been felt for 
Jackson, Clay, and other national idols. But it 
would be hard to name another American in whom 
the people at large felt such abiding confidence. 
Men trusted in him because of his patent devotion 
to the highest ideals — ideals of Christian living, 
of domestic virtue, of public rectitude — and be- 
cause of his obvious and phenomenal insight into 
the desires and needs of the nation. This last 
characteristic brought from his enemies, and from 
those who were not his enemies but knew him not 
at all, the accusation that he was truckling and time- 
serving and a slave to the fitful changes of public 
opinion, letting himself be drawn with it whither- 
soever it might lead. But the truth was very dif- 
ferent. On occasion — and the interval between 
the destruction of the Maine and the outbreak of 
war was one of such occasions — he could and did 
manfully withstand public opinion. His strength 



192 ROMANCE OF AMERICAN EXPANSION 

lay in his instinctive ability to grasp the sentiments 
of the nation and direct those sentiments along lines 
that made for national safety, honor, and greatness * 
He was always a believer in the destiny and 
capacity of the United States for great achievements. 
From the days of his young manhood he translated 
that belief into action. When the first gun rang out 
in the Civil War, he was a poor, unknown youth 
struggling for an education in a small Ohio town. 
Thither came an orator bearing Lincoln's call for 
troops. *'Our flag has been fired on," he cried; 

* In a letter from George B. Cortelyou, one of the men who knew 
McKinley best, to John F. Gaflfey, President of the McKinley Associa- 
tion of Connecticut, occurs this striking and just appreciation: "We 
cannot too often repeat to the American people the story of his life; 
his youthful patriotism; his devotion to his mother; his fine loyalty in 
all the sacred relations of home; his long years of public service, marked 
by ever-increasing growth in the affection and regard of the people. 
Such a life and such a service, even had they not knowTi the great respon- 
sibilities and great opportunities of the Presidency, would have entitled 
him to a place high on the honor roll of the nation. But from the day 
that he became President, he grew and broadened in his grasp of public 
questions, in his realization of the needs and weaknesses and the pos- 
sibilities of our citizenship, in his determination so to administer the 
affairs of his great office as to contribute in substantial degree to the 
Republic's progress along the pathway of enlightenment and civiliza- 
tion. His achievements have gone into history, to be told and retold 
in the coming ages. As we gain a better perspective of the eventful 
years of his administration, we shall come to know more and more the 
greatness and nobility of his nature and the fulness of his consecra- 
tion to the welfare of all the people. He died as he lived — to the last, 
gentle, patient, considerate, forgiving, and the words of his faith and of 
his hope fell upon this stricken land with the beauty and dignity of a 
benediction." 



WILLIAM Mckinley 193 

*'who will be the first to defend it?" Out from the 
throng stepped a little group of young men, McKinley 
among them. For fourteen months he served in 
the ranks, his one thought the preservation of the 
Union. Throughout the war he took part in every 
engagement fought by his regiment, the celebrated 
Twenty-third Ohio. At Antietam his bravery won 
him a lieutenancy. For gallantry at Opequan, 
Cedar Creek, and Fisher's Hill Lincoln made him 
a major by brevet. He figured in the last act of the 
long conflict, the grand review at Washington of the 
united armies of Grant, Sherman, and Sheridan. 
Then, laying down his sword, he returned to Ohio to 
begin the study of law. After which, in a few short 
years, he embarked on the Congressional career that 
won him speedy fame as a builder of Greater 
America. From the first he was identified with the 
tariff movement that did so much to lift the United 
States to a foremost place among the nations of the 
world. Soon AicKinley and Protection became 
synonymous terms. As early as 1888 he might have 
had the Republican nomination for the Presidency 
had it not been for his loyalty to John Sherman. 
Again in 1892 there was a determined movement 
to nominate him. And finally, in 1896, the predic- 
tion made by Blaine many years earlier found its 



194 ROMANCE OF AMERICAN EXPANSION 

vindication. William McKinley was nominated and 
elected Chief Magistrate of the United States. 

So there he stood in the White House, in the chill 
spring days of 1898, face to face with the prospect 
of war. Did war come, there could be only one 
result — certain and overwhelming victory for the 
United States. Since the days when Jackson chal- 
lenged the wrath of Spain by his daring raids into 
Florida, the disparity between the strength and 
resources of the two countries had become con- 
stantly and glaringly more apparent. On the one 
side was a young, lusty, vigorous people, in the full 
flush of a long and almost uninterrupted period of 
progress and prosperity. On the other, a decrepit, 
enervated, backward nation. No more convincing 
illustration of the material power of the United 
States could have been found than the action of 
Congress in voting an appropriation of fifty milHon 
dollars to be placed at the President's disposal '^as 
an emergency fund for national defense." 

''This morning,'' wrote Minister Woodford from 
Madrid, ''the papers announce the unanimous 
passage by the House of Mr. Cannon's bill putting 
fifty million dollars at your disposal. It has not 
excited the Spaniards — it has stunned them. To 
appropriate fifty millions out of money in the Treas- 



WILLIAM Mckinley 195 

ury, without borrowing a cent, demonstrates wealth 
and power. Even Spain can see this. To put this 
money, without restriction and by unanimous vote, 
absolutely at your disposal demonstrates entire con- 
fidence in you by all parties. The Ministry and 
the press are simply stunned."* But Spain, instead 
of accepting the sufficient hint, replied by securing 
a war loan of forty million dollars from the Bank of 
Spain. Even the patient McKinley's patience be- 
came exhausted. On April ii he sent his significant 
message to Congress — "In the name of humanity, 
in the name of civilization, in behalf of endangered 
American interests, which give us the right and the 
duty to speak and to act, the war in Cuba must stop.'^ 
Before the month was out the first gun in the con- 
flict with Spain had been fired and an epoch-making 
despatch had flashed around the world to an Ameri- 
can naval officer at Hongkong. This officer was 
George Dewey, commanding the Asiatic squadron, 
and the despatch, which he had been expectantly 
awaiting, simply said: "War has commenced be- 
tween the United States and Spain. Proceed at 
once to Philippine Islands. Commence operations 
at once, particularly against the Spanish fleet. You 

* "House Document No. i, Fifty-fifth Congress, Third Session," 
p. 684. 



196 ROMANCE OF AMERICAN EXPANSION 

must capture vessels or destroy. Use utmost en- 
deavors. — Long."* 

For our purpose it is not necessary to dwell on 
the splendid manner in which Dewey responded to 
this appeal — steaming into Manila harbor and 
crushing the Spanish fleet under the very guns of 
the protecting Spanish forts. The important point 
to us is the fact that Dewey's victory led directly to 
territorial acquisitions by the United States. First 
among these, in point of time, was the acquisition 
not of the Philippine but of the Hawaiian Islands. 
Ever since 1893, when the native monarchy was 
overturned in a revolution fostered, if not fathered, 
by American settlers, there had been a determined 
movement looking to the incorporation of Hawaii in 
the American domain. This idea, in fact, had first 
been mooted as early as 1853, when Marcy proposed 
to annex the islands lest they should fall into the 
hands of other Powers, and also as a means of 
strengthening American influence in the Pacific. f 
But annexation found few advocates in the United 
States until the revolution of 1893 had become an 
accomplished fact. And even then it was bitterly 

* "House Document No. 3, Fifty-fifth Congress, Third Session," 
p. 6. 

t A convenient summary of the Marcy negotiations is contained in 
Willis F. Johnson's "A Century of Expansion," pp. 235-37. 



WILLIAM Mckinley 197 

opposed so soon as the discovery was made that the 
Hawaiians expected to be admitted into the Union 
on a basis of Statehood. Still, the influences in favor 
of annexation were so strong that a treaty was 
actually negotiated and submitted to the United 
States Senate by President Harrison. Before action 
could be had, Harrison was succeeded by Cleveland, 
who promptly withdrew the treaty and, after careful 
inquiry, refused to resubmit it, declaring that the 
lawful government of Hawaii had been disrupted 
through American agency and that under the cir- 
cumstances it would be grossly improper for the 
United States to annex the islands. After this the 
question slumbered until 1897, when the Republi- 
can party returned to power and a new annexation 
treaty was negotiated. It was seen, however, that 
the Statehood idea would still prove an insuperable 
obstacle; and accordingly, acting on the precedent 
established in the annexation of Texas, it was 
decided to endeavor to annex Hawaii by joint reso- 
lution of both Houses of Congress, the resolution to 
provide merely that the islands should become ^'a 
part of the territory of the United States." 

This was the situation when the cable brought 
from the far East the news of Dewey's success. 
Following his first despatch came a second, announ- 



198 ROMANCE OF AMERICAN EXPANSION 

cing that he could take the city of Manila at any 
time. But it was evident that he did not have a 
force strong enough to hold it, if Spain should send 
out reinforcements, and at once the President deter- 
mined to rush troops to his aid. With this decision, 
and with the open violations of neutrality by the 
people of Hawaii, who allowed the American war- 
ships and transports to use Honolulu as a naval 
base, an additional reason was found for annexing 
the islands. From the strategic if from no other 
point of view, they were certain to prove of incal- 
culable value to the United States. Perceiving this, 
McKinley was quick to act. On his recommenda- 
tion, the joint resolution was brought up and adopted, 
in the House by a vote of two hundred and nine to 
ninety-one, and in the Senate by forty-two to twenty- 
one. July 7, 1898, it was definitely approved. 
Little more than a month later, and, oddly enough, 
on the same day that the peace protocol, marking 
the beginning of the end of the Spanish war, was 
signed at Washington, the United States Govern- 
ment took formal possession of Hawaii. Thus was 
consummated the first territorial addition of the 
McKinley administration. 

It was not one, however, in which McKinley him- 
self played the predominating role that he achieved 



WILLIAM Mckinley 199 

in the later acquisitions, and more particularly in 
the acquisition of the Philippine Islands. The 
war, as need hardly be recalled, was a succession of 
unbroken victories for American arms. Sampson 
and Schley destroyed a Spanish fleet in Cuban 
waters with almost as little difliculty as Dewey had 
experienced in wiping out that other Spanish fleet 
in far-away Manila Bay. Roosevelt and his Rough 
Riders attained international fame on Cuban soil. 
Miles, with scarcely an effort, mastered Porto Rico, 
whose native inhabitants built triumphal arches in 
the invaders' honor. In the Spanish mid-Pacific 
possessions of the Ladrone group, a single war-ship 
sufficed for the capture of the island of Guam. 
Utterly at the mercy of the United States, Spain in 
four short months was glad to sue for peace. And 
by the terms of the protocol, signed August 12, as 
preliminary to the conclusion of a definite treaty, she 
expressly relinquished "all claim of sovereignty over 
and title to Cuba," and ceded to the United States 
the island of Porto Rico, ''and also an island in the 
Ladrones to be selected by the United States."* 

The crucial problem, for the United States as well 
as for Spain, was the question of what should be 

♦"House Document No. i, Fifty-fifth Congress, Third Session," 
pp. 828-30. 



200 ROMANCE OF AMERICAN EXPANSION 

done with the PhiHppines. Inhabited by fierce and 
warlike tribes, these islands had long been in a 
chronic state of insurrection against the character- 
istic misrule of their Spanish overlords. In 1896 
there was an organized uprising, which was stamped 
out only through the defection of its leaders, who 
were bribed to leave the islands. One of these 
leaders, a shrewd and quick-witted Malay named 
Aguinaldo, was at Hongkong when Dewey received 
his orders to attack the Spanish fleet, and he at once 
resolved to return to the Philippines and organize a 
new rebellion. Carrying out this resolution, he soon 
raised a native force strong enough to invest Manila 
by land, while Dewey blockaded it with his war- 
ships. And, late in June, though without any 
official recognition from the American Admiral, 
the fiery Filipinos formally declared the islands free 
and independent, and elected Aguinaldo as their 
first President. 

Here, then, was one perplexing factor in the situa- 
tion. There were many others. Hardly had the 
echoes of the battle of Manila Bay died away before 
it was realized that if the logical fruits of Dewey's 
victory were reaped, the American nation would 
enter on a completely new phase of its existence. 
It would, for the first time, take a place among the 



WILLIAM Mckinley 201 

colony-owning nations, and be obliged to undertake, 
in both Hawaii and the Philippines, the governance 
of dependent and inferior peoples who must for a 
long time, possibly forever, remain in a state of 
tutelage. In the case of Hawaii, absorption by the 
United States had been a result not of conquest or 
coercion, but of the expressed desire of the inhabi- 
tants. The Filipinos, on the other hand, were be- 
lieved to aspire to independence, and might be ex- 
pected to oppose American sovereignty as bitterly 
as they had Spanish domination. If, under such 
circumstances, the islands were brought under 
American control, against the consent of the gov- 
erned, what would become of the bed-rock princi- 
ples on which the United States had been founded ? 
And, in any event, where under the Constitution 
could authority be had for the establishment of a 
colonial system, for the inclusion under the Ameri- 
can flag of dependencies whose inhabitants were 
not fit, and might never become fit, to enjoy the rights 
and privileges of full American citizenship? 

These considerations, reinforced by others which 
it is not necessary to detail here, led a certain ele- 
ment of the American people, including some of the 
most thoughtful and public-spirited citizens, to 
denounce the idea of colonial and transmarine ex- 



202 ROMANCE OF AMERICAN EXPANSION 

pansion, or, as they preferred to call it, the "im- 
perialistic" idea. As early as June 15 — the very 
day, by the way, that the House of Representatives 
was voting to annex Hawaii — a mass-meeting was 
held in Faneuil Hall, Boston, to protest against 
oversea expansion; and a resolution was adopted 
declaring that any annexation of territory as a result 
of the war would be a violation of national faith. 
This resolution, of course, rested on the avowed 
purpose with which the United States had gone to 
war — namely, to free Cuba from the yoke of Spain. 
"I speak not of forcible annexation," President 
McKinley had said in his 1897 ISIessage to Congress, 
"because that is not to be thought of, and under 
our code of morality that would be criminal aggres- 
sion." What the "anti-imperialists" failed to appre- 
ciate was the fact that the reference here was to the 
suspicion, widely entertained abroad, that the United 
States meant to force a war on Spain in order to 
acquire Cuba for herself. The national faith was 
indeed pledged so far as Cuba was concerned — but 
no farther. 

None the less, the opponents of expansion main- 
tained their agitation. Under the auspices of an 
"Anti-Imperialist League," a systematic campaign 
was begun to influence public opinion against the 



WILLIAM Mckinley 203 

idea of embarking on a colonial policy, and, in 
especial, against holding the Philippines. Repre- 
sentative citizens like John Sherman, Andrew Car- 
negie, Thomas Wentworth Higginson, Carl Schurz, 
Charles Eliot Norton, Charles Francis Adams, 
David Starr Jordan, John G. Carlisle, the Rev. 
C. H. Parkhurst, George F. Edmunds, Samuel 
Bowles, George S. Boutwell, and Edward Atkinson 
joined in appeals to the nation, asserting their 
belief that retention of the Philippines would be 
"inconsistent with the principles of this Republic, 
and fraught with danger to its peace and to the peace 
of the world." With unpatriotic fatuity, some of 
the more zealous among the "anti-imperialists" 
even went so far as to oppose a colonial policy on 
the ground that by its treatment of the negroes, the 
Indians, and the native Californians, the American 
nation had proved itself unfit for ruling subject 
races. And so soon as it was known that the Govern- 
ment had definitely determined to retain the Phil- 
ippines, the more violent opponents of expansion 
concentrated their wrath on the person of one 
man, President McKinley, whom they did not 
hesitate to denounce as the "crowning hypocrite 
of the age" and "the leader of the imperialist 
frenzy." 



204 ROMANCE OF AMERICAN EXPANSION 

Now, McKinley was no hypocrite, yet undoubtedly 
the "anti-imperialists'' were right in regarding him 
as the man above all others responsible for adding 
the Philippines to the American domain. From 
first to last he was the controlling spirit in deciding 
the policy the United States should pursue. But in 
deciding as he did, he was thoroughly conscientious. 
The ethical side of the problem was ever uppermost 
in his mind. What do we owe to ourselves and 
what do we owe to the Filipinos? There were, he 
clearly saw, several courses open to the United 
States. The islands might be retained, temporarily 
or in perpetuity. They might be ceded to some 
European Power, or to Japan. They might be 
returned to Spain, in whole or in part. Or they 
might be turned over to the Filipinos. Which course 
would it be right and proper for the United States 
to adopt ? The "anti-imperialists," as we have seen, 
lost no time in deciding that retention, at any rate, 
would be a highly improper course. INIcKinley, 
placed as he was in a position of the greatest respon- 
sibility, hesitated to imitate them in leaping at a 
conclusion. 

For a while, indeed, he had little opportunity to 
attack the problem. As John D. Long, his Secre- 
tary of the Navy, grimly said in a conversation with 



WILLIAM Mckinley 205 

the writer, "We were too busy carrying on war to 
think much about the Phihppines." And for this 
reason the signing of the peace protocol found the 
President still undecided. Hence, unlike the definite 
provisions relating to Cuba and Porto Rico, the 
Philippine clause in the protocol simply read: "The 
United States will occupy and hold the city, bay, and 
harbor of Manila pending the conclusion of a treaty 
of peace which shall determine the control, disposi- 
tion, and government of the Philippines." In the 
month that intervened between the signing of the 
protocol and the writing of the preliminary instruc- 
tions of Messrs. Day, Davis, Frye, Gray, and Reid, 
the American peace commissioners, the President 
doubtless made considerable headway in solving 
the stupendous problem before him. For we find 
him instructing the commissioners that "the United 
States cannot accept less than the cession in full 
right and sovereignty of the island of Luzon."* 
But he was still far from satisfied that this would 
adequately meet the situation. What he wanted, 
before definitely making up his mind, was absolute 
and exact information regarding the state of affairs 
in the Philippines. 

* "House Document No. i, Fifty-fifth Congress, Third Session," 
p. 908. 



2o6 ROMANCE OF AMERICAN EXPANSION 

This information was to no small extent supplied 
on the arrival in Washington of General F. V. 
Greene, who had been in command of one of the 
expeditions sent to assist Dewey in capturing and 
holding Manila. Besides submitting a detailed 
report to the President, General Greene concisely 
summed up the results of his personal investigations 
in a brief memorandum, in which he declared in 
part : 

*'If the United States evacuate these islands, 
anarchy and civil war will immediately ensue and 
lead to foreign intervention. The insurgents were 
furnished arms and the moral support of the navy 
prior to our arrival, and we cannot ignore obliga- 
tions, either to the insurgents or to foreign nations, 
which our own acts have imposed upon us. The 
Spanish Government is completely demoralized, and 
Spanish power is dead beyond possibility of resur- 
rection. Spain would be unable to govern these 
islands if we surrendered them. . . . On the other 
hand, the Filipinos cannot govern the country with- 
out the support of some strong nation. They 
acknowledge this themselves, and say their desire is 
for independence under American protection; but 
they have only vague ideas as to what our relative 
positions would be. . . . "The length of our occu- 




Copyrijjht, iSyg, by Frances B. Johnston. 

George Dewey 



WILLIAM Mckinley 207 

pation would depend on circumstances as developed 
in the future, but should be determined solely in our 
discretion without obligation to or consultation with 
other Powers. This plan can only be worked out 
by careful study by the Paris Commission [the 
American peace commissioners], and they should 
have advice and full information from some one who 
has been here during our occupation and thoroughly 
understands the situation. It is not understood in 
America, and unless properly dealt with at Paris will 
inevitably lead to future complications and possibly 
war."* 

Testimony to the same effect soon came from 
Paris, where the American peace commissioners 
while negotiating the first clauses of the treaty gave 
hearings to American officers and others having a 
first-hand knowledge of Philippine affairs. Their tes- 
timony, however, did not at once produce unanimity 
of opinion among the commissioners. October 25 
they cabled to Washington statements indicating 
that Judge Day favored occupation of only a part of 
the islands, that Senator Gray did not deem it wise 
to take the Philippines either in whole or in part, 
and that Messrs. Frye, Davis, and Reid agreed in 

* " Executive Document B, Fifty-fifth Congress, Third Session," 
Part 2, pp. 374-75- 



2o8 ROMANCE OF AMERICAN EXPANSION 

advocating retention of the entire archipelago. With 
this majority view the President was by now in hearty 
concurrence. Back flashed a despatch to Paris, 
clear-cut, concise, and emphatic: 

"The information which has come to the Presi- 
dent since your departure convinces him that the 
acceptance of the cession of Luzon alone, leaving 
the rest of the islands subject to Spanish rule, or 
to be the subject of future contention, cannot be 
justified on political, commercial, or humanitarian 
grounds. The cession must be of the whole archi- 
pelago or none. The latter is wholly inadmissible, 
and the former must therefore be required. The 
President reaches this conclusion after most thor- 
ough consideration of the whole subject, and is 
deeply sensible of the grave responsibilities it will 
impose, believing that this course will entail less 
trouble than any other and besides will best sub- 
serve the interests of the people involved, for whose 
welfare we cannot escape responsibility. — Hay."* 

Thus, in a few words, was summed up the result 
of weary weeks of anxious deliberation. Only those 
who knew the President well can realize the mental 
and spiritual ordeal through which he passed before 

* "House Document No. i, Fifty-fifth Congress, Third Session," 
P- 935. 



WILLIAM McKINLEY 209 

arriving at his final decision. But it is easy to appre- 
ciate how greatly he was cheered and fortified by 
the consciousness that he could count on the support 
of the nation. For vehement and energetic as the 
"anti-imperialists'' were, they were in reality a 
feeble minority. Public sentiment was overwhelm- 
ingly in favor of the policy which in the end was held 
by the President to be the best, the wisest, and the 
most honorable the United States could adopt. 

But it is important to note that in trending as 
it did, public sentiment was inspired by mixed mo- 
tives. The ethical considerations which may fairly 
be said to have been paramount in McKinley's mind 
exercised only a partial influence on the minds of 
the great mass of Americans. They, there can be 
no doubt, were largely actuated by the old-time 
instinct for expansion, the instinct that in the early 
days led their forefathers across the Alleghanies, 
across the Mississippi, and across the plains until at 
last they set foot on the shore of the Pacific. And 
there was, too, a commercial motive, the motive of 
utilizing the Philippines as an entering wedge to gain 
for the United States an opening in the still un- 
developed markets of the far East. Mixed motives, 
in truth, partly instinctive, partly selfish, and partly 
humanitarian, but combining to impel the great 



2IO ROMANCE OF AMERICAN EXPANSION 

Republic along the true path of destiny and 
duty. 

And so it came about that after Spain, solaced 
by the payment of twenty million dollars, had finally 
consented to sign away her rights to the Philippines, 
the peace treaty received ratification in the United 
States Senate, despite the stubborn opposition of 
the ^^anti-imperialist" forces. With the exchange 
of ratifications Spain abandoned her last vestige of 
sovereignty in the New World, where she had once 
lorded it supreme, and the United States became 
the acknowledged possessor of the Philippine Islands, 
Porto Rico, and Guam. Since then only two terri- 
torial additions have been made — Tutuila and the 
smaller Samoan islands which fell to the United 
States in the partition of 1899, and the ten-mile 
Canal Zone on the Isthmus of Panama, acquired in 
1904. It would, however, be folly to assert that 
the last chapter in the history of the territorial 
growth of the United States has been written. The 
nation is still young, still vigorous, still ambitious. 
Great things lie before it. And as it has done in 
the past, so will it do in the future — reach out, 
extend, grow. 



CHAPTER IX 

HINTS FOR FURTHER READING 

There is no exhaustive history of the terri- 
torial growth of the United States. Several years 
ago such a work was projected by Professors Chan- 
ning and Hart, of Harvard University, but for 
some reason it was not written, and no one has 
since essayed the task. There are, however, a 
number of books sufficiently detailed to prove 
useful both to the student and to the general 
reader. 

Perhaps the best of these is Willis F. Johnson's 
"A Century of Expansion" (1903). Dr. Johnson's 
point of view is that of a student who apprehends 
clearly the forces contributing to territorial growth, 
and if his book is disfigured by certain unfortunate 
errors in detail, and is further marred by inade- 
quate appreciation of the evidence bearing on the 
poKcy adopted by the United States Government 
with regard to the acquisition of Texas, Oregon, 
and California, it is nevertheless helpfully informa- 
tive. It also is a book that lends itself well to steady 

211 



212 ROMANCE OF AMERICAN EXPANSION 

reading, being written in a fluent, attractive style. 
Less readable but distinctly useful are Edmund J. 
Carpenter's ^'The American Advance" (1903), 
William A. Mowry's ''The Territorial Growth of 
the United States" (1902), and Oscar P. Austin's 
"Steps in the Expansion of our Territory" (1903). 
Of these, Dr. Mowry's book is the most elaborate, 
but it is written largely from secondary sources and 
seldom gets down to the heart of its subject. As 
one critic has said: "Dr. Mowry regards our terri- 
torial acquisitions as a series of special providences, 
and upon this theory contents himself with the 
externals of negotiation, without making any 
attempt to present the underlying causes." Edward 
Bicknell's "The Territorial Acquisitions of the 
United States" (revised edition, 1904) is to be 
recomrnended as a handy little pocket treatise, 
clear, concise, and as a rule accurate. 

Of a somewhat different character from any of 
the foregoing is Edwin Erie Sparks' "The Expan- 
sion of the American People" (1900). Social as 
well as — and, indeed, more than — territorial ex- 
pansion is the subject of this volume, in which many 
novel and significant facts relating to the growth 
of the Republic are presented in an interesting form, 
and with a wealth of pictorial illustration that adds 



HINTS FOR FURTHER READING 213 

not a little to the value of the book. W. E. Griffis' 
*'The Romance of Conquest" (1899) similarly in- 
cludes much besides the story of territorial growth, 
and contains chapters on the Revolution, the war 
with France, the naval campaign against the Bar- 
bary corsairs, the War of 181 2, and the Civil War. 
Its chief interest lies in its emphasis on the role 
played by the Navy in promoting national de- 
velopment. The diplomacy of expansion may 
conveniently be studied in A. B. Hart's "The 
Foundations of American Foreign Pohcy" (1901), 
John Bassett Moore's '^American Diplomacy" 
(1905), and John W. Foster's "A Century of 
American Diplomacy" (1901). With these might 
also be read, as embodying clear-cut views of the 
expansionistic tendencies of the present era, A. R. 
Colquhoun's ''Greater America" (1904), and A. C. 
Coohdge's ''The United States as a World Power" 
(1908). The various territorial treaties, up to and 
including the Alaska Purchase, will be found in 
"Treaties and Conventions concluded between the 
United States and Other Powers," pubHshed as 
"Senate Executive Document No. 47, Forty-Eighth 
Congress, Second Session." 

Turning to the literature of the early westward 
movement, the filling up of the Middle West under 



214 ROMANCE OF AMERICAN EXPANSION 

the leadership of Daniel Boone, George Rogers 
Clark, John Sevier, and their fellow pioneers, we 
find three general works of outstanding importance. 
The most scholarly and complete are Justin Winsor's 
two volumes, '^The Mississippi Basin" (1895), ^^^ 
''The Westward Movement" (1897). The first 
surveys in painstaking fashion the struggle between 
France and England from 1697 to 1763 for posses- 
sion of the Middle West, while the second reviews 
the history of the same section in the forma- 
tive period of its colonization from 1763 to 1798. 
No one desiring thorough knowledge of the events 
transpiring in the Middle West during the time 
of its exploration and first settlement should ignore 
Dr. Winsor's volumes. But it must be said that they 
form rather difficult reading, and it is a pleasure to 
be able to supplement them with the lively narra- 
tive contained in Theodore Roosevelt's ''The Win- 
ning of the West" (four- volume edition, 1889-96, 
six- volume edition, 1900). Later research has 
shown Mr. Roosevelt in error on some important 
points, but has also served to emphasize the fact 
that he has signally enlarged our knowledge of the 
pioneering movement. The mastery of details he 
displays, the clearness of insight, and the ability to 
marshal his facts and present his conclusions in a 



HINTS FOR FURTHER READING 215 

graphic and convincing way, combine to place his 
^^ Winning of the West" among the really noteworthy 
American historical productions. 

The westward movement may also be studied to 
advantage by the aid of the ^^ American Nation" 
co-operative history of the United States (1905-08), 
though here it is necessary to follow it through a suc- 
cession of volumes, namely: ^'France in America," 
by R. G. Thwaites; '^PreHminaries of the Revo- 
lution," by G. E. Howard; ''The American Revo- 
lution," by C. H. Van Tyne; ''The Confederation 
and the Constitution," by A. C. McLaughlin; 
"The FederaHst System," by J. S. Bassett; "The 
Jeffersonian System," by E. Channing; and, for a 
slightly later period, "The Rise of American Na- 
tionality," by K. C. Babcock, and "The Rise of the 
New West," by F. J. Turner. In making use of 
this work, the student is advised at all times to 
consult the analytic index that forms its last volume. 
Among works of minor importance, less scholarly 
and critical but still useful, may be mentioned "A 
History of the Mississippi Valley, from its Discovery 
to the End of Foreign Domination" (1903), by 
John R. Spears and Alonzo H. Clark, and James K. 
Hosmer's "A Short History of the Mississippi 
Valley" (1901). 



2i6 ROMANCE OF AMERICAN EXPANSION 

For those who wish to go into the subject in still 
greater detail, a vast fund of literature is available 
in the early State histories of Tennessee, Kentucky, 
and Ohio; memoirs and reminiscences of the pio- 
neers, and later publications dealing with special 
aspects of the westward movement. Not all of the 
early State histories are equally valuable, and all of 
them have to be read with considerable caution, but 
the fact remains that they constitute our sole source 
of information on many questions of the greatest 
significance. In studying the history of Tennessee 
the reader will find particularly helpful J. G. M. 
Ramsey's *^The Annals of Tennessee" (1853), and 
A. W. Putnam's *' History of Middle Tennessee" 
(1859). The early history of Kentucky is told from 
different angles in H. Marshall's ''The History of 
Kentucky" (1824), Mann Butler's ''A History of the 
Commonwealth of Kentucky" (1836), and Lewis 
Collins' "History of Kentucky" (revised edition, 
edited and enlarged by his son, Richard H. Collins, 
1878). ColHns' work is really encyclopedic, and 
every subsequent writer on Kentucky is greatly in- 
debted to it. So, too, with Henry Howe's "His- 
torical Collections of Ohio" (1847), ^^^ James H. 
Perkins' "Annals of the West" (1846), an exhaustive 
compilation covering the entire history of the Mis- 



HINTS FOR FURTHER READING 217 

sissippi Valley from the coming of the Spaniards to 
the middle of the nineteenth century. The publi- 
cations of the Filson Club, of Louisville, Kentucky, 
already cited in the course of the present work, 
should also be mentioned for the light they throw 
on the social, economic, and political history of the 
first trans-Alleghany pioneers. 

The life, customs, and manners of these adven- 
turous men and women are admirably depicted in 
Joseph Doddridge's ''Notes on the Settlement and 
Indian Wars of the Western Parts of Virginia and 
Pennsylvania from 1763 until 1783 inclusive, with 
a View of the State of Society and Manners of the 
First Settlers of the Western Country" (1824). As 
a description of the home life of the settlers there is 
nothing comparable with this work. The more 
adventurous side of their existence may be studied in 
such books as Wills de Hass' "History of the Early 
Settlement and Indian Wars of Western Virginia" 
(1851), A. C. Withers' ''Chronicles of Border War- 
fare" (183 1, or, better, in the edition of 1895, anno- 
tated by R. G. Thwaites), Timothy Fhnt's "Indian 
Wars of the West" (1833), and John Alexander 
McClung's " Sketches of Western Adventure " (1832). 
All of these, judged by the strict standards of modern 
history writing, are lamentably weak in that they 



2i8 ROMANCE OF AMERICAN EXPANSION 

rely on tradition rather than documentary evidence; 
yet even so, they preserve for us much that would 
otherwise have been lost. 

Passing from the literature of the early West in 
general to the literature dealing particularly with 
the first great Westerner, Daniel Boone, a foremost 
place must be accorded to R. G. Thwaites' *' Daniel 
Boone" (1902). In writing this biography Dr. 
Thwaites enjoyed the advantage of being in a po- 
sition to utilize the great mass of manuscript material 
collected by the late Lyman C. Draper, and as a 
result has been able to incorporate in his book many 
facts unknown to earlier biographers. His work, 
however, is by no means exhaustive, and it will be 
well to supplement it by reading John M. Peck's 
"Life of Daniel Boone" (1847), pubhshed as vol. 
XIII of Sparks' ''Library of American Biography, 
New Series," which is still a valuable book notwith- 
standing the fact that it was written so long ago. 
Boone's so-called ''autobiography," one of the great- 
est curiosities in American literature and utilized 
by all subsequent writers, is contained in John 
Filson's "The Discovery, Settlement, and Present 
State of Kentucky" (1784), and Gilbert Imlay's 
"A Topographical Description of the Western Ter- 
ritory of North America" (1793). A good deal of 



HINTS FOR FURTHER READING 219 

sound information bearing on Boone will be found 
in G. W. Ranck's ^'Boonesborough, its Founding, 
Pioneer Struggles, Indian Experiences, Transylvania 
Days, and Revolutionary Annals" (1901), published 
as No. 16 of the Filson Club publications. Timothy 
FHnt's ^^Biographical Memoir of Daniel Boone" 
(1841) and W. H. Bogart's ^'Daniel Boone and the 
Hunters of Kentucky" (1874) are uncritical works, 
which, however, in some respects repay perusal. 
For a general bibliography of the literature on 
Boone, consult W. H. Miner's "Contribution toward 
a bibliography of writings concerning Daniel Boone" 
(190 1.) It might perhaps be added that the present 
writer has in preparation a book, "Daniel Boone 
and the Wilderness Road," designed to serve the 
double purpose of a biography of Boone and a study 
of the opening up of the early West. 

The Louisiana Purchase forms the subject of a 
number of works, and has naturally been given 
much space in general histories. A masterly ac- 
count is found in the first two volumes of Henry 
Adams' "History of the United States of America 
during the Administrations of Jefferson and Madi- 
son" (1889-91), written from sources hitherto un- 
touched, thoroughly scholarly, and marred only by 
an obvious prejudice against Jefferson and Madison. 



220 ROMANCE OF AMERICAN EXPANSION 

As correctives of this prejudice, and as being 
in themselves able and informative, the reader is 
referred to the accounts contained in Edward 
Channing's "The Jeffersonian System" (1906), pub- 
hshed as vol. XII of the "American Nation," James 
Schouler's "History of the United States of America 
under the Constitution," vol. II (1882), and John B. 
McMaster's "History of the People of the United 
States," vols. II, III (1885, 1892). Among works 
dealing more especially with the Purchase the stu- 
dent will find considerable information of value in 
Ripley Hitchcock's "The Louisiana Purchase and 
the Exploration, Early History, and Building of the 
West" (1903), and F. A. Ogg's "The Opening of 
the Mississippi" (1904). In Francis Barbe Marbois' 
"History of Louisiana" (1830), the story of the Pur- 
chase is told from the point of view of one of the 
French negotiators, while the influence of Napoleon 
in promoting the sale is emphasized in James K. 
Hosmer's "The History of the Louisiana Purchase" 
(1902). W. J. M. Sloane's "The World Aspects 
of the Louisiana Purchase" (in The American His- 
torical Review, vol. IX., pp. 507-521), and C. F. 
Robertson's "The Louisiana Purchase in its influ- 
ence upon the American System" (in the American 
Historical Association's "Papers," vol. I, no. 4), 



HINTS FOR FURTHER READING 221 

are two stimulating essays which may well be 
read. 

Much material is available for documentary study 
by those interested in going that far into the subject. 
The reports, letters, etc., which passed in the course 
of the negotiations are contained in ^^ American State 
Papers — Foreign Relations," vol. IV, and ''Ameri- 
can State Papers — PubHc Lands," vol. I. In the 
"Old South Leaflets," No. 103, is an abstract of 
Louisiana Purchase documents in the offices of the 
departments of State and of the Treasury. "House 
Document No. 430, Fifty-Seventh Congress, Second 
Session," contains "State Papers and Correspond- 
ence bearing upon the Purchase of the Territory 
of Louisiana." Consult also J. D. Richardson's 
"Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the 
Presidents" (1896-99), "The Writings of Thomas 
Jefferson" (H. A. Washington's edition, 1853-4, and 
P. L. Ford's edition, 1892-99), and "The Writings 
of James Monroe" (S. M. Hamilton's edition, 
1898-1903). 

Of the many biographies of Jefferson, Henry 
S. Randall's three-volume "The Life of Thomas 
Jefferson" (1858) is still regarded as the standard 
work, notwithstanding the animus it displays against 
Hamilton and the Federalists. George Tucker's 



222 ROMANCE OF AMERICAN EXPANSION 

''Life of Thomas Jefferson" (1837) is chiefly valu- 
able as giving a Virginia view of the great Virginian, 
and as containing much information from local 
sources not found in other works. James Parton's 
"The Life of Thomas Jefferson" (1874) is more 
readable than either Randall's or Tucker's biog- 
raphy, but otherwise is not so satisfactory; and the 
same verdict must be rendered with respect to 
Thomas E. Watson's "Thomas Jefferson" (1903). 
However, in J. T. Morse, Jr.'s "Thomas Jeffer- 
son" (1883) we have a book by a modern biogra- 
pher who, although censoriously critical, appreciates 
Jefferson's intense Americanism, and his real po- 
sition as the master-mind in the Purchase of 
Louisiana. Another biography which, for all its 
sketchiness, deserves to be drawn to the student's 
attention is Henry C. Merwin's "Thomas Jeffer- 
son" (1901), pubKshed in the excellent "Riverside 
Biographical Series." 

There are very few books dealing exclusively, or 
even primarily, with the acquisition of Florida, but 
among them is one that all future writers and in- 
vestigators must reckon with. This is H. B. Fuller's 
"The Purchase of Florida" (1906), a work which, 
whatever may be thought of its conclusions, is indis- 
pensable for the compactness and thoroughness with 



HINTS FOR FURTHER READING 223 

which it presents the evidence relating to its most 
intricate subject. Apart from Mr. Fuller's scholarly 
monograph, the student cannot do better than fol- 
low the narrative of events as given in the general 
histories of Henry Adams, James Schouler, and 
John B. McMaster, cited above. Adams, it should 
be noted, does not carry the story beyond 181 7, but 
so far as he goes is more detailed than either Schouler 
or McMaster. The documentary evidence upon 
which all of these writers rely is contained largely 
in the ^^ American State Papers — Foreign Rela- 
tions," vol. IV, giving the official papers bearing on 
the diplomacy of the acquisition and the events of 
Jackson's second invasion of Florida. The docu- 
ments relating to the revolution in West Florida and 
its occupation by the United States are in the third 
volume of the same invaluable compilation. Other 
material of importance is found in John Quincy 
Adams' ''Memoirs" (1874-77), and in the writings 
of Madison and Monroe; also in Thomas Hart 
Benton's ''Thirty Years' View" (1854-57), which 
contains, as was stated in the Florida chapter, 
Jackson's defense of his conduct. 

For completeness, candor, and appreciation of 
historical values, none of the later biographies of 
Jackson can claim superiority to James Parton's 



224 ROMANCE OF AMERICAN EXPANSION 

'*Life of Andrew Jackson" (i860). Written in 
three massive volumes, each evidencing prolonged 
and careful research, Parton's monumental work 
appeals almost equally to the student whose sole 
interest is in getting at the facts, and to the reader 
chiefly concerned in finding the facts presented in 
an interesting way. Parton's one great fault, in the 
opinion of some critics, is an undue severity of judg- 
ment when weighing the words and deeds of his 
hero; and quite recently two large biographies have 
been written for the express purpose of compelling 
a more favorable opinion. These are A. S. Colyar's 
"Life and Times of Andrew Jackson; Soldier, 
Statesman, President" (1904), and A. C. Buell's 
''History of Andrew Jackson; Pioneer, Patriot, 
Soldier, Politician, President" (1904). Unfortu- 
nately, both show a pronounced tendency to hero- 
worship, and it would not be unfair to describe the 
Colyar biography, which is the work of a Tennes- 
see lawyer, as an unusually elaborate piece of special 
pleading. Mr. Buell's book is better, being well 
written and rich in incident and anecdote. Other 
biographies possessing features that make them 
helpful are W. G. Sumner's ''Andrew Jackson" 
(1899), which, by the way, is prefaced by a splenetic 
introduction from the pen of J. T. Morse, Jr., who 



HINTS FOR FURTHER READING 225 

sees in Jackson little more than a demagogue suc- 
ceeding because he pleased the multitude; Cyrus T. 
Brady's ''The True Andrew Jackson" (1906), and 
William Garrott Brown's ''Andrew Jackson" (1900). 
This last, although one of the smallest, is perhaps 
the best of the minor "lives" of Jackson, giving 
the essentials in a most attractive form and in a 
thoroughly judicial spirit. 

The leading authority on the Texas Question is 
George P. Garrison, whose "Texas" (1902), "West- 
ward Extension" (1906), and "The First Stage of 
the Movement for the Annexation of Texas" (in 
The American Historical Review, vol. X, pp. 72- 
96) contain the latest words of scientific historical 
investigation with regard to this ancient theme of 
controversy. It is not too much to say that Dr. 
Garrison has effectually disposed of the long preva- 
lent idea that the acquisition of Texas was from first 
to last the work of the Southern "slavocracy." This 
idea colors and distorts the Texas sections of Her- 
mann E. Von Hoist's "Constitutional and PoHtical 
History of the United States," vol. II (1879), and 
Professor Schouler's already mentioned " History of 
the United States of America under the Constitution," 
which are nevertheless extremely valuable. John B. 
McMaster's "History of the People of the United 



226 ROMANCE OF AMERICAN EXPANSION 

States," vol. VI (1906), is especially helpful for the 
evidence it adduces showing how widespread was 
the enthusiasm aroused in the United States by 
the uprising of the Texans to win their independence. 
The most exhaustive treatment of the subject is 
found, however, in the Texas volume of H. H. 
Bancroft's "History of the Pacific States of North 
America" (1882-90), and with this should be studied 
Dudley G. Wooten's "Comprehensive History of 
Texas" (1898), which contains a reprint of Hender- 
son Yoakum's "History of Texas from its First 
Settlement in 1685 to its Annexation by the United 
States in 1846." Anson Jones' "Memoranda and 
Official Correspondence relating to the RepubKc of 
Texas" (1859), is also valuable. Jones was the 
last President of Texas, and wrote from long and 
intimate knowledge of the country, in which he had 
been a resident since 1833. G. T. Fulmore's "The 
Annexation of Texas and the Mexican War" (in the 
Texas State Historical Association's Quarterly, vol. 
V, pp. 28-48) is a paper of corrective value as to 
the truth about annexation and slavery's connection 
with the early colonization of Texas. Another phase 
of Texas history is strikingly exhibited in J. L. 
Worley's "The Diplomatic Relations of England and 
the Republic of Texas" (in the Texas State His- 



HINTS FOR FURTHER READING 227 

torical Association's Quarterly, vol. X, pp. 1-40). 
Contemporary opinion of the annexation movement, 
and the views entertained by the leaders for and 
against annexation, may be studied at first hand in 
such works as Thomas Hart Benton's ^'Thirty 
Years' View," John Quincy Adams' ^'Memoirs," 
and the writings and speeches of Daniel Webster, 
Henry Clay, and John C. Calhoun. 

Until Henry G. Bruce pubhshed his "Life of 
General Houston" (189 1), there was nothing ap- 
proaching an adequate biography of Houston. C. 
Edwards Lester's ''Sam Houston and His Repubhc" 
(1846), and "Life and Achievements of Sam Houston, 
Hero and Statesman" (1883), were, and still are, use- 
ful, but require to be read with great critical caution. 
Particular interest attaches to the 1846 book, as 
having been written under the watchful eye of 
Houston himself, in his private room at the National 
Hotel in Washington. But it remained for Mr. 
Bruce to give us the first really worthy account of 
the character and career of the man who "made 
Texas." Since then another excellent biography has 
appeared in Alfred M. Williams' "Sam Houston 
and the War of Independence in Texas," although, 
strictly speaking, this is a history of the Texan War 
rather than a study of the great commander of the 



228 ROMANCE OF AMERICAN EXPANSION 

Texans. Apart from these four books, there is 
really nothing with which the student of Houston's 
life need concern himself. 

Coming to the literature on the occupation of 
Oregon, we are similarly confronted with the fact 
that there are comparatively few books upon which 
reliance may be placed. The best-known histories 
of Oregon — W. H. Gray's " A History of Oregon " 
(1870), and William Barrows' ''Oregon" (1883) — 
are practically worthless, being written from a nar- 
row, partizan point of view. It was in Gray's book 
that the Whitman legend was first formally foisted 
on the pubhc, to survive to the present day despite 
the corrective evidence presented in Edward G. 
Bourne's ''The Legend of Marcus Whitman" (in 
his "Essays in Historical Criticism," 1901), and 
WilHam I. Marshall's "History vs. The Whitman 
Saved Oregon Story" (1904). To find a general 
work treating the Oregon Question fully, sanely, and 
without prejudice, it is necessary to turn to the 
"North- West Coast" and "Oregon" volumes of 
H. H. Bancroft's "History of the Pacific States of 
North America." Plere every phase of the subject 
is examined in detail, and in the spirit of the true 
historical investigator. Gustavus Hines' "Oregon: 
Its History, Condition, and Prospects" (185 1) has 



HINTS FOR FURTHER READING 229 

defects similar to those of Gray and Barrows, but 
is interesting as a first-hand account of the experi- 
ences of one of the early settlers, Hines having gone 
to Oregon as early as 1839. Another early settler to 
place his experiences on paper is Peter H. Burnett, 
who, in his ^^Recollections and Opinions of an Old 
Pioneer '^ (1880), gives a vivid account of life in 
both Oregon and California in the forties. It will 
also be well to read "The Oregon Trail" (edition 
of 1 901), by Francis Parkman, the distinguished 
historian who took the long trail to the Oregon 
country in 1846. The diplomacy and legislation re- 
lating to Oregon may conveniently be studied in 
Bancroft's ''Oregon" volumes, in Benton's ''Thirty 
Years' View," in the general works on American 
diplomacy enumerated above, and in the writings 
of Webster and Calhoun, particularly vols. IX, XI, 
and XII of the "Writings and Speeches of Daniel 
Webster" (1903), and vol. V of the "Works of John 
C. Calhoun" (1853-55). 

There are three brief but useful biographies of 
Benton. Taken together, they afford a remarkably 
complete view of this great expansionist's per- 
sonality and achievements. Theodore Roosevelt's 
"Thomas Hart Benton" (1887), prepared for the 
always informative "American Statesmen" series of 



230 ROMANCE OF AMERICAN EXPANSION 

biographies, is an appreciative study written with 
its author's characteristic ease and vigor of expres- 
sion. W. M. Meigs, in ''The Life of Thomas Hart 
Benton" (1904), deals with his subject in an interest- 
ing, judicious, and sympathetic way. Joseph M. 
Rogers, in ''Thomas H. Benton" (1905), is less 
scholarly and critical than either Mr. Roosevelt or 
Mr. Meigs, but brings out with especial clearness 
Benton's fine idealism and the reasons for his long 
continued popularity with his constituents. In study- 
ing Benton as an expansionist it also is desirable 
to read the biographical sketch contributed by his 
daughter, Mrs. Fremont, to her husband's "Me- 
moirs of My Life" (1887), a sketch devoted to an 
explanation of how Benton first became interested 
in the westward movement and his activities in 
connection therewith. Interesting glimpses of Ben- 
ton are further revealed in Mrs. Fremont's '' Sou- 
venirs of my Time" (1887), a book worth reading 
even without reference to its historical interest. 

The Mexican War may be studied in detail in 
the "Mexico," "California," and ''Arizona and 
New Mexico" volumes of Bancroft's stupendous 
work; or, more briefly, in Professor Schouler's "His- 
tory of the United States of America under the con- 
stitution," and George P. Garrison's "Westward 



J 



HINTS FOR FURTHER READING 231 

Extension," which serves as a useful corrective to 
Professor Schouler's insistence on the ''wolf and 
lamb" point of view. Charles H. Owen's ''The 
Justice of the Mexican War" (1908) goes to the 
opposite extreme, but contains material not readily 
accessible elsewhere, and should by no means be 
overlooked. Among earlier books W. W. Jay's "A 
Review of the Causes and Consequences of the 
Mexican War" (1849) still repays perusal, notwith- 
standing its author's extreme partizanship. A. A. 
Livermore's "The War with Mexico Reviewed" 
(1850) gives a good idea of the contemporaneous 
differences of opinion regarding the war. The 
military operations are well described in R. S. 
Ripley's "The War with Mexico," but see also 
U. S. Grant's "Personal Memoirs" (1885-86), 
Marcus J. Wright's "General Scott" (1894), and 
O. O. Howard's "General Taylor" (1892). 

Bancroft is again the leading authority when we 
pass to the literature having to do with the conquest 
of California, the subject being exhaustively ex- 
amined in the ''California" volumes of his "His- 
tory of the Pacific States of North America." In 
the opinion of the present writer, however, he is 
scarcely fair in his treatment of Fremont and the 
Bear Flag revolutionists, and the same criticism 



232 ROMANCE OF AMERICAN EXPANSION 

applies to Theodore H. Hittell's four- volume ^'His- 
tory of California" (1886-189 7), and Josiah Royce's 
''California" (1886). Nevertheless, Bancroft, Hit- 
tell, and Royce are indispensable to the student, each 
making distinct contributions to our knowledge of 
the events of the conquest. Dr. Garrison's ''West- 
ward Extension" is also useful, although far less 
space is devoted to the winning of California than to 
the annexation of Texas. Other material of im- 
portance is found in works devoted primarily to a 
recital of the achievements of Fremont, such as 
Charles W. Upham's "Life, Explorations, and Public 
Services of John Charles Fremont" (1856), John 
Bigelow's "Memoir of the Life and Public Services 
of John C. Fremont" (1856), and S. M. Smucker's 
"Life of Fremont" (1856). 

The reader must bear in mind, however, that if 
the tendency among later historians is unduly to 
minimize Fremont's share in the conquest of Cali- 
fornia, these earlier writers exaggerate it. Yet we 
must go back to them for a biography, as no modern 
work has appeared to supersede them. For a similar 
reason, so far as knowledge of Fremont's explora- 
tions is concerned we are mainly dependent on Fre- 
mont's own account, as given in his "Report of the 
Exploring Expedition to the Rocky Mountains in 



HINTS FOR FURTHER READING 233 

the Year 1842, and to Oregon and California in the 
Years 1843-44." This was first issued in 1845 ^s a 
Government pubKcation, but the following year was 
brought out in the usual way by a New York pub- 
lishing house, and rapidly passed into several editions. 
It is a work not merely of autobiographical but of 
distinct geographical and historical usefulness, and 
is among the most important of early books on the 
far West. Fremont's ''Memoirs of My Life," 
published more than forty years later, is likewise 
deserving of study, together with Mrs. Fremont's 
already mentioned ''Souvenirs of my Time." 

There is no single work affording a complete 
account of the Alaska Purchase; and, indeed, as 
stated in the text, such an account is nowhere to be 
had, since the seal of secrecy has not been altogether 
removed even at this late day. But a sufficiently 
clear understanding is possible with the aid of cer- 
tain books and documents, among which the most 
important are John Bassett Moore's "A Digest of 
International Law" (1906), "Proceedings of the 
Alaskan Boundary Tribunal" (1903), published as 
''Senate Document No. 162, Fifty-Eighth Congress, 
Second Session"; the "Alaska" volume of H. H. 
Bancroft's "History of the Pacific States of North 
America," Frederic Bancroft's "WiUiam H. Seward" 



234 ROMANCE OF AMERICAN EXPANSION 

(1900), Frederick W. Seward's "Seward at Wash- 
ington, as Senator and Secretary of State'' (1891), 
E. L. Pierce's "Memoir and Letters of Charles 
Sumner" (1877-93), and "The Works of Charles 
Sumner" (1870-83). 

Professor Moore's "A Digest of International 
Law" was started as a revision of Wharton's "Di- 
gest," but is practically a new work, and no student 
of American foreign policy can afford to be without 
it. Its Alaska material is contained chiefly in vols. 
I, III, and V; but consult the index. Frederick W. 
Seward's "Seward at Washington" derives its value 
from the fact that the author was closely associated 
with his father during the later years of Seward's 
public life. Frederic Bancroft's "WilHam H. Sew- 
ard," in addition to throwing new light on the 
Alaska treaty, is far and away the best biography of 
Seward that has yet been written. In fact, it is one 
of the best among American historical biographies. 
T. H. Lothrop's "WilKam Henry Seward" is briefer 
and less searching, and contains uncommonly little 
about the Alaska Purchase, but is useful for those 
who lack the time or the opportunity to use the larger 
works. Biographical material' of the greatest value 
is also available in "The Life of William H. Seward, 
with Selections from his Works" (1855), edited by 



HINTS FOR FURTHER READING 235 

George E. Baker; and in Mr. Baker's edition of 
''The Works of William Henry Seward'' (1853-84). 
The war with Spain and the acquisition of oversea 
possessions have already been productive of an ex- 
tensive Hterature. H. H. Bancroft's ''The New 
Pacific" (1900) goes into both subjects in consider- 
able detail, taking a comprehensive and careful sur- 
vey of the insular acquisitions in Pacific waters, and 
examining the resources of the countries bordering 
on the Pacific. A. R. Colquhoun's "Greater 
America" is again useful in this connection. For an 
entertaining as well as informative work, the student 
should procure Harry Thurston Peck's "Twenty 
Years of the RepubKc" (1906), written by a man who 
possesses a keen appreciation of the influence of the 
personal factor in the making of history. C. H. 
Forbes-Lindsay's "America's Insular Possessions" 
(1906) deals in turn with each island dependency, 
describing the people, customs, industries, com- 
merce, etc., of each. Henry Cabot Lodge's "The 
War with Spain" (1900) is both thoughtful and 
interesting, and is valuable as showing how the war 
impressed a statesman who was actively concerned 
in its prosecution. For a similar reason reference 
should be made to R. A. Alger's "The War with 
Spain" (1901), and J. D. Long's "The New Ameri- 



236 ROMANCE OF AMERICAN EXPANSION 

can Navy'* (1903)? the one written by the Secretary 
of War and the other by the Secretary of the Navy in 
the war administration, A. T. Mahan's "Lessons 
of the War with Spain" (1899) is especially signifi- 
cant because its author was a member of the naval 
advisory board during the war. The anti-imperial- 
ist view is presented in numerous publications, 
among which may be mentioned G. F. Hoar's "No 
Power to Conquer Foreign Nations and Hold their 
People in Subjection against their Will" (1899), and 
Edward Atkinson's "The Cost of War and Warfare 
from 1898 to 1904" (1904). W. F. Willoughby's 
"Territories and Dependencies of the United States" 
(1905) gives an excellent account of the measures 
adopted for the administration of the various insular 
possessions. For more detailed study the reader 
may consult the various official documents cited in 
the preceding chapter. 

A satisfactory biography of William McKinley has 
yet to be written. Among existing works the most 
useful, though almost devoid of literary merit, is A. E. 
Coming's "Wilham McKinley" (1907). Mr. Cor- 
ning himself describes his work as "a portrayal of 
Wilham McKinley not so much in a historical sense 
as in that of his personality." Murat Halstead's 
"The Illustrious Life of William McKinley our Mar- 



HINTS FOR FURTHER READING 237 

tyred President" (1901) is, as its title indicates, a 
flamboyant production. Charles H. Grosvenor's 
^^William McKinley, His Life and Work" (1901) 
is not a biography but a compilation, made up of 
newspaper editorials, tributes from Governors of 
States, eulogies from other sources, and various odds 
and ends. Far better than any of these is John 
Hay's ''Memorial Address on the Life and Character 
of William McKinley," delivered before Congress, 
February 22, 1902. See also the ''Speeches and 
Addresses of William McKinley from March i, 1897, 
to May 30, 1900" (1900). 



INDEX 



Adams, Charles Francis, and ex- 
pansion, 203. 

Adams, John, President, 43. 

Adams, John Quincy, defends 
Jackson, 74; urges Spain to 
cede Florida, 75-6; opposed to 
Florida treaty, 83; elected Pres- 
ident, 8t,; opposes annexation 
Texas, 100; influence on Seward, 
170. 

Aguinaldo, Emilio, and Philip- 
pines, 200, 

Alamo, massacre at, 98. 

Alaska, acquisition first sug- 
gested, 173; Gwin's plan to ac- 
quire, 174; early history, 174-6; 
Seward's plan to acquire, 177- 
8; negotiations begun, 178-9; 
and completed, 180-2; oppo- 
sition to acquisition, 182-6; 
treaty ratified, 185; Seward 
names, 186; also mentioned, 77, 
130, 169, 187; bibliography, 

233-4. 
Ambrister, Robert, captured, 71; 
executed, 72; also mentioned, 

75. 

Amelia Island, occupation of, 58. 

Anti-Imperialist League, 202-3; 
bibliography, 236. 

Arbuthnot, Alexander, captured, 
71; executed, 72; also men- 
tioned, 75. 



Astoria, founding of, 107, 116; 
purchased, 122. 

Atkinson, Edward, and expan- 
sion, 203. 

Austin, Moses, and Texas, 81. 

Austin, Stephen F., plants first 
American settlement Texas, 81; 
imprisoned, 97; advocates Tex- 
an War, 98. 

Bancroft, George, and Oregon, 
io9«. 

Bear Flag Revolt, 15 1-5. 

Benton, Thomas Hart, opposes 
Florida treaty, 8^, 84; op- 
poses annexation Texas, 100; 
urges occupation Oregon, in; 
characteristics, 112-3; early 
career, 113-4; elected Senator, 
115; defends American claim 
Oregon, 11 7-21; promotes ex- 
ploration Oregon, 125, 144; 
denounces Webster-Ashburton 
treaty, 127-8; wins Oregon cam- 
paign, 134-5; quoted, 1 1 1-2, 
115, 118, 119, 125-6, 128-9; 
also mentioned, 137, 170, 171; 
bibliography, 229-30. 

Blaine, James G., and McKinley, 

193- 
Blount, William, and Houston, 93. 
Blue Licks, battle of, 21-2; its 

significance, 23. 



239 



240 



INDEX 



Boone, Daniel, birth and early 
training, 5; removes to North 
Carolina, 6; description of, 6n; 
in Braddock's army, 7; life in 
North Carolina, 6-9; first ex- 
ploration Kentucky, 10-3; first 
Indian captivity, 11; opens 
Wilderness Road, iT,n; second 
Indian captivity, 17-8; in battle 
Blue Licks, 19, 21-2; also men- 
tioned, 3, 4, 14, 25, 28, 29, 31, 
88; bibliography, 218-9. 

Boone, Rebecca, 6-7W. 

Boone, Sarah, 5«. 

Boone, Squire, $n. 

Boonesborough, founding of, 13; 
center of warfare, 14; besieged, 
18; sends aid Bryan's Station, 
21; bibliography, 13;?, 219. 

Bourne, Edward G., and Whit- 
man legend, 123W, 228. 

Boutwell, George S., and expan- 
sion, 203. 

Bowie, James, slain at Alamo, 98. 

Breckinridge, John C, letter from 
Jefiferson to, 48. 

Bright, John, letter from Sumner 
to, 182 and n. 

Bryan's Station, siege of, 19-21. 

Buchanan, James, and Oregon, 
132; and California, 148. 

Caldwell, William, at Bryan's Sta- 
tion, 19W. 

Calhoun, John C, and Oregon, 
129. 

California, early American colon- 
ization, 137-8; why United 
States desired, 139-41; offers to 
purchase, 141-2; Fremont leads 
expedition, 145; Bear Flag Re- 



volt in, 1 5 1-5; American con- 
quest, 154-64; also mentioned, 
77, no, 130, 143, 168, 171; bib- 
liography, 231-2. 

California Fur Company, 177, 
178, 179. 

Canal Zone, acquisition of, 210. 

Carlisle, John G., and expansion, 
203. 

Carmichael, William, and Spain, 
38, 42. 

Carnegie, Andrew, and expan- 
sion, 203. 

Carson, Kit, with Fremont, i62n. 

Casa d'Yrujo, Marquis, and 
West Florida, 55. 

Cass, Lewis, and Oregon, 132 and 

«, 135- 

Castro, Jose, intrigues of, 139; 
defied by Fremont, 146-7; in- 
tentions of, 1 50-1; cowardice, 
153; flight, 154; joins Pio Pico, 
157; leaves California, 158. 

Channing, Edward, on Lewis and 
Clark expedition, 39-40. 

China, and Seward, 172-3. 

Claiborne, W. C. C, ordered 
seize West Florida, 57. 

Clark, George Rogers, capture of 
northwest posts, 17, 31; visits 
Williamsburg, 30. 

Clark, William, at St. Louis, 115. 

Clay, Cassius M., letter from 
Seward to, 173; Alaska negotia- 
tions of, 178-9. 

Clay, Henry, opposed Florida 
treaty, 82, 84; defeated by Polk, 
103; popularity of, 191; quoted, 
83W. 

Cleveland, Grover, and Spain, 
188; and Hawaii, 197. 



INDEX 



241 



Clinch, D. L., destroys Negro 
Fort, 67. 

Constantine, Archduke, and 
Alaska, 180. 

Cortelyou, George B., and Mc- 
Kinley, 192^/. 

Creek War, 62, 89. 

Crockett, David, slain at Alamo, 
98. 

Cuba, Seward plans annexation, 
172; later proposals annex, 187; 
war in, 188-9; Spain relin- 
quishes sovereignty, 199. 

Danish West Indies, annexation 
planned, 172, 187. 

Davis, C. K., peace commissioner, 
205, 207. 

Day, W. R., peace commissioner, 
205, 207. 

Dewey, George, ordered Philip- 
pines, 195; defeats Spanish 
fleet, 196; reinforcements sent, 
198. 

Diplomacy, American, bibliog- 
raphy, 213. 

Edmunds, George F., and ex- 
pansion, 203. 

Expansion, beginnings, 4, 13-4; 
inevitability, 25, 51, 78, 166; 
influence sectionalism, 78-9, 129; 
review of steps, 166-8; plans 
that failed, 172, 187; motives 
in recent, 209; bibliography, 
210-37. 

Fessenden, W. P., and Alaska, 

185. 
"Fifty-four Forty," party cry, 

origin, 131-2M. 



Filson, John, first historian Ken- 
tucky, lo; quoted, im. 

Finlcy, John, visits Boone North 
Carolina, 9; guides Boone Ken- 
tucky, 10. 

Florida, Jefferson first proposes 
acquisition, 38; Spanish Gov- 
ernor promotes American col- 
onization, 39; Napoleon seeks 
cession, 43; Jefi'erson again 
proposes acquisition, 45; why 
United States desired, 51-3; 
boundaries East and West, 
53-4; United States declares 
sovereignty over West, 55; Con- 
gress appropriates for purchase, 
56; insurrection in West, 57; 
English in, 62; Jackson's first in- 
vasion, 63-4; destruction Negro 
Fort in, 67; Jackson's second 
invasion, 69-74; Adams urges 
cession to United States, 75-6; 
cession accomplished, 76; terms 
treaty, 77; also mentioned, 48, 
61, 78, 80, 81, 82, 107, 108, no, 
167, 183, 194; bibliography, 
222-3. 

Floyd, John, and Oregon, in, 
115-21, 122, 123, 137. 

Franklin, Benjamin, Minister to 
France, 34. 

Fremont, Jessie Benton, charac- 
teristics, 144. 

Fremont, John Charles, early 
career, 143; marriage, 144; 
Oregon explorations, 1 25, 144-5; 
leads California expedition, 145; 
defies Castro, 146-7; instructions 
sent, 148-9; defense, 149-50; in- 
cites Bear Flag Revolt, 151; leads 
revolutionists, 153; goes to Mon- 



242 



INDEX 



terey, 155; invades southern 
California, 157; occupies Los 
Angeles, 158; returns north, 
159; raises new army, 160; 
completes conquest California, 
163; court-martialed, 164; bibli- 
ography, 232-3. 

French and Indian War, 7-8, 42. 

Frye, W. P., peace commissioner, 
205, 207. 

Gadsden Purchase, 164-5; 169. 

Gaines, Edmund, letter from 
Jackson to, 66, 

Gillespie, Archibald, joins Fre- 
mont, 147, 150; at Monterey, 
157; expelled from Monterey, 
159; reinforces Kearny, 162. 

Girty, Simon, at Bryan's Station, 
19, 21. 

Gortchakoff, Prince Alexandra, 
and Alaska, 178. 

Grant, Ulysses S., captures Vicks- 
burg, 105; plans acquisition 
San Domingo, 191. 

Gray, George, peace commis- 
sioner, 205, 207. 

Gray, Robert, discovers the Co- 
lumbia, 107. 

Greene, F. V., Philippine memo- 
randum of, 206-7. 

Guam, captured, 199. 

Gwin, W, M,, and Alaska, 174. 

Hamilton, Alexander, as expan- 
sionist, 26, 49. 

Hannegan, E. A., and Oregon, 
132, 135- 

Harrison, Benjamin, and Hawaii, 

197. 
Harrison, William H., President, 

lOI. 



Hawaii, movement to annex, 196- 
7; annexation effected, 198; 
contrasted with Philippines, 201; 
bibliography, 235-6. 

Hay, John, and Philippine nego- 
tiations, 208. 

Hayti, Seward plans annexation, 
172. 

Henry, Patrick, and Revolution, 29. 

Higginson, T. W., and expansion, 
203. 

Horseshoe Bend, battle of, 62, 89. 

Houston, Sam, boyhood, 88; 
heroism at Horseshoe Bend, 
89-92; rapid rise, 93; plans 
conquest Texas, 85^, 86-7, 94; 
removes to Texas, 96; promotes 
revolutionary sentiment, 97; 
commands Texan army, 99; 
negotiates for annexation, 101-2; 
last years, 104-5; quoted, 96^; 
also mentioned, 98; bibliog- 
raphy, 227-8. 

Hudson's Bay Company, and 
Oregon, 116, 122; and Alaska, 
177, 179, 180. 

Independence, Declaration of, 30. 
Independence, War for, 4, 17, 31. 

Jackson, Andrew, early years, 59; 
characteristics, 59-60; rapid 
rise, 60; in Creek War, 62; first 
invasion Florida, 63-4; orders 
destruction Negro Fort, 66; 
controversy with Monroe, 69; 
second invasion Florida, 69- 
74; defended by Adams, 74; 
appointed Governor Florida, 
76; elected President, 83; tries 
purchase Texas, 84, 86; con- 



INDEX 



243 



nives Houston's plans, 87; 
Texan policy vindicated, 103; 
quoted, 6r, 66, 68, 69, 70, 84; 
also mentioned, 88, 89, 90, 91, 
92, 96, 100, 138, 170, 191, 194; 
bibliography, 223-5. 
Jay, John, and Mississippi crisis, 

37. 
Jefferson, Thomas, first great ex- 
pansionist, 26; birth and early 
training, 27-8; begins practice 
law, 29; member House Bur- 
gesses, 29; and Declaration Inde- 
pendence, 30; elected Governor 
Virginia, 31; as a national- 
ist, 32-3; draws up first North- 
West Ordinance, ^y, becomes 
interested expansion, 34; suc- 
ceeds Franklin, 34; plans Led- 
yard exploration, 35-6; enters 
Washington's Cabinet, 37; and 
Mississippi crisis, 38; prornotes 
Michaux exploration, 39-40; 
elected President, 43; alarmed 
by Napoleon's designs, 44; 
instructs Livingston, 45; learns 
of Louisiana Purchase, 47; 
troubled by Constitutional 
scruples, 48; secures ratifica- 
tion treaty, 49; quoted, 31, 35, 
36, 37, 38, 39, 40, 44, 45, 46, 48, 
171; also mentioned, 170; bib- 
liography, 221-2. 

Johnson, Andrew, President, 172, 
178. 

Jones, Thomas Ap Catesby, in 
California, 140. 

Jordan, David Starr, and ex- 
pansion, 203. 

Kearny, Stephen W., conquers 



New Mexico, 142; ordered in- 
vade California, 149; fights 
battle of San Pascual, 162-3; 
occupies Los Angeles, 163; 
quarrels with Stockton, 164. 
Kelley, Hal, and Oregon, 122. 

Larkin, T. O., in California, 148. 

La Salle, explorations of, 42. 

Ledyard, John, American ex- 
plorer, 35. 

Lee, Richard Henry, and Revo- 
lution, 29. 

Lester, C. Edwards, quoted, 89- 
92. 

Lewis and Clark Expedition, Ed- 
ward Channing on, 39-40; 
strengthens American claim 
Oregon, 107. 

Lewis, W. B., letter from Jack- 
son to, 84. 

Linn, Lewis F., and Oregon, iii, 
124, 128, 129, 130. 

Livingston, Robert R., appointed 
Minister to France, 44; in- 
structed treat for purchase 
Florida and New Orleans, 45; 
negotiates purchase Louisiana, 
47. 

Long, James, and Texas, 80. 

Long, John D., and Spanish- 
American War, 204. 

Los Angeles, capture of, 158. 

Louisiana, early history, 42; Na- 
poleon obtains, 43; Napoleon 
determines to sell, 46; United 
States purchases, 47; Congress 
ratifies treaty, 49; also men- 
tioned, I, 24, 25, 29, 34, 40, 51, 
53, 54, 55, 58, 77, 80, 107, 166, 
183, 184; bibliography, 218-21. 



244 



INDEX 



Madison, James, letter from Jef- 
ferson to, 36; dispute with 
Marquis Casa d'Yrujo, 55; 
elected President, 57; orders 
occupation West Florida, 57; 
reasons for ordering occupa- 
tion, 58; also mentioned, 61. 

Maine, destruction battleship, 189, 
190, 191. 

Marcy, W. L,, and Hawaii, 196. 

Marshall, W. I., and Whitman 
legend, 123W, 228. 

Mayo, Robert, on Houston's 
Texas plans, 87. 

McKeever, Isaac, and capture St. 
Mark's, 71. 

McKinley, William, characteris- 
tics, 190-1; early career, 192- 
3; elected President, 194; war 
message, 195; approves annex- 
ation Hawaii, 198; denounced 
by anti-imperialists, 203; Phil- 
ippine policy, 204-9; supported 
by public opinion, 209; bibliog- 
raphy, 236-7. 

Mexican War, 104, 106, 136-7, 
142, 148, 151-65; bibliography, 
230-1. 

Michaux, Andre, French' explorer, 
39-40. 

Middle West, early settlement, 4, 
14-7, 34, 37, 41; bibliography, 
213-8. 

Miles, Nelson A., in Porto Rico, 
199. 

Mims, Fort, massacre at, 62, 89. 

Missouri Compromise, 78, 79. 

Mobile Act, organizing West Flor- 
ida, 55- 

Monroe, James, letter from Jef- 
ferson to, 44; negotiates pur- 



chase Louisiana, 47; seeks 
purchase Florida, 55; elected 
President, 68; controversy with 
Jackson, 69. 

Monterey, capture of, 154; loss 
of, 159. 

Morrill, J. S., and Alaska, 
185. 

Napoleon, plans French aggran- 
dizement America, 42-3; secures 
retrocession Louisiana, 43; de- 
termines to sell Louisiana, 46; 
also mentioned, 26, 44, 49, 51, 

55, 184. 
Nicholls, Edward, in Florida, 65, 

75- 

Nolan, Philip, and Texas, 80. 

Nootka Sound Convention, 107, 
108. 

Norton, Charles Eliot, and ex- 
pansion, 203. 

Oregon, early claimants to, 107; 
popular ignorance concerning, 
108 and n; occupation urged, 
III, 1 16-21; American coloni- 
zation begins, 122-4; the "great 
migration" to, 125-6; Webster- 
Ashburton treaty and, 126-8; 
renewal of struggle for, 129-31; 
negotiations with Great Britain, 
132; compromise on, 133-4; 
treaty ratified, 135; also men- 
tioned, 77, 106, no, 147, 168, 
171, 173; bibliography 228-9. 

Pakenham, Sir Richard, and Ore- 
gon, 132. 

Parkhurst, Rev. C. H., and ex- 
pansion, 203. 



INDEX 



245 



Parma, Duke of, and Louisiana, 
42. 

Philippines, Dewey ordered to, 
195-6; troops sent to, 198; 
native insurrection in, 200; 
problem presented by, 201, 
opposition to acquisition, 202-3; 
McKiniey and, 204-9; public 
opinion upholds acquisition, 
209; bibliography, 235-6. 

Pico, Jesus, pardoned by Fre- 
mont, 161. 

Pico, Pio, Governor of California, 

139, 153, 157, 158. 

Pioneers, life and characteristics 
of early western, 14-7; in Mis- 
sissippi Valley, 34, 37, 41; in 
Texas, 81-2, 95-9; in Oregon, 
123-6; in California, 137-9, 
150-64. 

Poinsett, Joel R., Minister to 
Mexico, 83, 84; aids Fremont, 

143- 

Polk, James K., elected President, 
103; and Oregon, 131-5; and 
California, 139. 

Pope, John, Governor of Arkan- 
sas, 86n. 

Porto Rico, conquest of, 199. 



Randolph, Thomas Mann, letter 
from Jefiferson to, 44. 

Reid, Whitelaw, peace commis- 
sioner, 205, 207. 

Rhea, J., and Monroe- Jackson 
controversy, 69. 

Roosevelt, Theodore, and Cuba, 
199. 

Russian Fur Company, 174, 177, 
179, 180. 



Samoan Islands, acquisition of, 
210; bibliography, 235. 

Sampson, W. T., and Spanish- 
American War, 199. 

San Domingo, plan to annex, 173, 
189. 

San Ildefonso, treaty of, 43. 

San Jacinto, battle of, 99, loi. 

San Pascual, battle of, 152, 162-3. 

Santa Anna, A. L. de, and Texan 
War, 98, 99. 

Schley, W. S., and Spanish-Amer- 
ican War, 199. 

Schouler, James, on Monroe- 
Jackson controversy, 69», 

Schurz, Carl, and expansion, 203. 

Seward, William Henry, as an 
expansionist, 169-73; early 
years, 170; becomes interested 
in Alaska, 174; plans its 
acquisition, 177-8; begins 
negotiations, 178-9; completes 
negotiations, 180-2; fears 
treaty will fail, 183; selects 
name of Alaska, 186; quoted, 
170, 171, 173; bibliography, 

233-5- 

Seymour, Sir George F., at Mon- 
terey, 154, 155. 

Sherman, John, and McKiniey, 
193; and expansion, 203. 

Slidell, John, Mexican negotia- 
tions of, 141-2. 

Sloat, J. D., ordered occupy Cal- 
ifornia ports, 149, 150; seizes 
Monterey, 154; angered at Fre- 
mont, 156; sails for home, 157. 

Sonoma, capture of, 15 1-2. 

Spanish-American War, causes, 
188-9; progress, 195-6, 199; 
peace protocol signed, 199; peace 



246 



INDEX 



negotiations, 205-8; peace treaty 
ratified, 210; bibliography, 235- 
6. 

Stockton, R. F., invades southern 
California, 157; occupies Los 
Angeles, 158; again takes field, 
160; reinforces Kearny, 163; 
quarrels with Kearny, 164. 

Stoeckel, Edward de, and Alaska, 
178-81. 

Stuart, Archibald, letter from 
Jeflferson to, 34-5. 

Stuart, John, captured, 11; slain, 
12. 

Sumner, Charles, and Alaska, 
182-5. 

Sutter, John A., California pio- 
neer, 138-9, 145. 

Texas, how sectionalism affected 
annexation, 79; early adven- 
turers, 80; Mexico promotes 
American colonization, 81; Aus- 
tin settles, 81; rapid American- 
ization, 82; American offers to 
purchase, 83-4; beginnings of 
sectional opposition to annex- 
ation, 85; Houston's plans to 
win, 85«, 86-7, 94; Mexico 
opposes further Americaniza- 
tion, 95; war for independence, 
98-9; overtures for annexation 
fail, 1 01; outlook brightens, loi- 
2; annexation treaty defeated, 
103; annexation effected, 104, 
106; in Civil War, 104-5; also 
mentioned, 77, 107, no, 129, 



131, 132, 136, 137, 139, 140, 
141, 167, 171; bibliography, 
225-7. 

Thwaites, R. G., description Dan- 
iel and Rebecca Boone, 6-7W. 

Transylvania Company, 13W. 

Travis, William B., slain at Alamo, 
98. 

Tyler, John, favors annexation 
Texas, 101-2; and Whitman 
legend, 123W; and Webster- 
Ashburton treaty, 127; and Ore- 
gon, 1 30-1; and California, 140. 

Van Buren, Martin, President, 
101, 143. 

Walpole, Frederick, on Bear Flag 
revolutionists, 155-6. 

Washburn, C. C, and Alaska, 
186. 

Washington, George, in Brad- 
dock's army, 7; and Revolution, 
29; also mentioned, 37, 39. 

Webster- Ashburton treaty, 1 26, 
129. 

Webster, Daniel, and Whitman 
legend, 123W. 

Whitman, Marcus, legend of, 123 
and n; bibliography, 228. 

Wilderness Road, opening of, 
13W; also mentioned, 3, 4; bibli- 
ography, 12)11, 219. 

Woodford, S. L., Minister to 
Spain, 194-5- 

Wyeth, Nathaniel, and Oregon, 



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